My House Is Falling Down Read online

  For pudding, Angus has made crème brûlée.

  ‘You’re a wonderful cook, Angus.’

  ‘Years of living alone, sweetheart.’

  ‘How alone?’

  ‘Very alone.’

  ‘You’ve never married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But surely you’ve lived with people.’

  ‘Never.’

  I don’t know what I had expected but it is not this. Already, I have thought about it a lot: how Angus might have lived, and with whom; how long for, and how meaningfully.

  ‘Not even once?’

  ‘No. I mean, some toing and froing between their places and mine, but that’s it.’

  A man of sixty who has never lived with anyone is someone with likely, even serious, defects. And yet, I am flooded with a sensation I recognize from long ago. It is not a sensation I expected to feel again and it’s a sensation I would do well to ignore – that any woman in a situation like this would do well to ignore – for jostling with shock and common sense are wild and inappropriate thoughts: I would not stand for that from you. I could be the one. I know how.

  ‘Thought about it once or twice,’ he adds. ‘Thought better of it.’

  I look at Angus and I feel the difference between us. What could be better than living with another person? What nicer than waking beside them, so that you may never feel alone? Except that you may still feel alone, and neither marriage nor partnership can entirely prevent that. Maybe Angus accepts this more readily than most and lives his life accordingly. Or maybe he is selfish, or lazy, and when commitment is required of him he finds reasons for sidestepping the necessary effort and resolve. This is all conjecture, of course; I hardly know the man. Still, I would place a substantial bet on his thinking marriage essentially dishonest.

  ‘Have you never wanted to live alone, Lucy?’

  ‘No. I love being married.’

  ‘Well, you have a lovely husband, of course.’

  Angus’s elbows are on the table, his hands clasped before him in an attitude of expectation, and quite suddenly, I am outraged. If this man is asking to hear exactly what my husband means to me, then let him hear it, smooth bastard. He is too convinced of himself: worse, he is too convinced of me.

  So, I tell him a tale of the four walls around me and my husband and how we keep them upright. I tell him how Mark never fails to surprise me. I describe what we have built together. I am merciless: I say things like, ‘Not that you will understand, not having been married.’ I explain that an elderly friend advised us the week before our wedding that in marriage there is no stopping place and that no one ever tells you that – and I recount how often we say to one another that our friend was absolutely right and while it’s a real bugger at times having nowhere to pull over, there is no one in the world with whom either of us would rather keep going.

  Angus has been listening intently. Now, he is leaning back in his chair. His arms are folded across his chest, fingers tucked into his armpits. He says, ‘That’s a formidable partnership, by the sounds of it.’

  ‘Nothing comes close.’

  ‘But you’re here with me.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  One of the flowers is drooping slightly over the side of the vase. I touch it, lightly.

  ‘Lucy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look, I don’t make a habit of seeing married women, I can promise you, so I’m going to ask you something.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What is this?’

  Fish away, I think, you on your boat.

  ‘Because – and I’ll be honest, sweetheart – I think I’m in some serious trouble here.’

  ‘Isn’t it usually the case,’ I say, ‘that in situations like this, it is more about oneself than the other person?’

  Angus flinches. Outside, on the water, a police launch speeds past close by, its lights on full. Its wash, by the time it reaches Verity’s curved frame, has almost played out. It makes no impact.

  ‘If it is the case,’ Angus says, ‘should I be wary?’

  ‘No. We should be realistic.’

  He nods.

  ‘We probably should.’

  We. We are already talking we.

  He drives me to the station.

  At the first set of traffic lights, he asks, ‘May I call you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Texts?’

  ‘Yes. Or email. But no calls. I explained that already.’

  ‘You did. Sorry.’

  I stare at the traffic lights, willing them to stay red. When Mark is driving and we are talking, it’s generally my only chance to chip in during a conversation.

  Angus says, ‘I tell myself whenever I’m with you, and quite often when I’m not, “Angus, no!” I tell myself not to think about you. I try very hard not to think about you.’ The lights change and he pulls away. ‘But it doesn’t work. You’re there all the same, all the time.’

  I listen to the muffled rub of his clothes as he changes gear.

  He says, ‘Is it okay with you if I pull over just ahead?’

  I nod.

  He manoeuvres on to double yellow lines, briefly switching the hazard lights on and then off again, and kills the ignition. The engine’s purr succumbs and for a moment neither of us moves. The sudden quiet is jarring: my ears are ringing slightly and I can hear Angus breathing. We twist in our seats to face each other and in the car’s muted hush the rustle of fabric and leather seats is so obtrusive that suddenly I am fraught with self-consciousness. Angus releases his seat belt, which retracts abruptly. Cars are streaking past outside, I’m at risk of being late for my train, and he is reaching across my lap and taking my hands in both of his, and squeezing them, firmly. My engagement ring digs sharply into the flesh of his thumb: whether it hurts him, he does not indicate. He is holding my hands in the manner of someone about to deliver serious news.

  He asks me, very politely, ‘Is it okay with you if I kiss you?’

  I nod, again.

  Mark says, ‘This puts a rather different spin on things.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Not to us!’

  ‘Well, clearly it has.’

  ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I won’t see him again.’

  ‘That’s your call.’

  ‘It’s our call! I won’t see him if you ask me not to.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Let’s get that straight.’

  ‘How can you say that? I’m your wife!’

  ‘Luce,’ Mark’s tone is unequivocal. ‘I’m going over to the barn. I’ve got work to do. So have you.’

  ‘Can’t you at least tell me what you think?’

  ‘I think you must do what you need to do.’

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  There is a pause before he says, ‘I’m not even going to answer that.’

  My phone screen lights up with Angus’s name.

  Mark makes a face as if to say, ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘You’ll see him again,’ he says. ‘It’s a given. I’m off.’

  ‘Mark, please don’t go. Talk to me properly, I beseech you!’

  ‘You beseech me?’ he says, turning away. ‘What are you, the Book of Common Prayer?’

  I sit down, heavily, as if it were the end of the day and not the beginning. There’s a bran flake I must have missed when wiping the table after breakfast. I rub it to dust between my fingers until just one resolute, sharp nugget remains. I read Angus’s text. ‘How are things your end, my angel? Let me know. Xxx’

  Time passes.

  It’s so dark in this kitchen. Bloody winter. But it’s not just the winter. Until Mark comes in and switches on every last overhead halogen bulb, it’s always dark in this house. The best light is in the barn, where Mark is.

  Angus texts again. ‘Sweetheart, do you like La Traviata? I can get tickets. Xxx’

 
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Tell me when! Xxx’

  Five weeks.

  This is all it takes.

  This is how long it is until Angus says he loves me.

  ‘What, are you sure?’

  ‘More sure than I’ve ever been in my life.’

  ‘Oh, Angus.’

  He gathers me up in his arms and rolls me over and then he says it again because now that the unsaid has been said – and the not-done been done – he wants to hear what it sounds like. He tells me he has been trying not to say it, or think it, and has been doing everything he can to put it out of his mind but now he wants to declare himself over and over, on that same, sweet, reverent afternoon.

  ‘I love you,’ he says, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ He strokes my hair; his eyes are shining. ‘Have you seen The Life of Brian?’

  He is heavy on top of me. Laughing hurts.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  It’s because, Angus explains, he feels like the hermit whose twenty-year vow of silence is broken when Brian jumps into his dusty hollow wanting somewhere quiet to hide, but instead, the hermit is animated into a frenzy of loud declarations.

  ‘You daft man.’

  ‘But I’m him!’ says Angus. ‘I want to jump up and down. I want to shout it from the rooftops: “I love Lucy Burdett!”’

  Five weeks, four encounters. I didn’t think love happened that way.

  ‘It never has, with me,’ says Angus, adamantly. ‘This is a first.’

  ‘Yes, well, you say that—’

  Tenderly, he places his fingers over my mouth. The low light from the window is playing upon his eyelashes, which are damp. I feel the sting of tears in my own eyes.

  ‘Shhh, my angel. I say it, Lucy, because it’s true.’

  And so, in the early hours of the evening, when we have dozed a while and woken again to the fresh joy of one another, I say it back. I tell him I love him too, not because it is true but because I feel that such a gift deserves not just any old thank-you. It is true, though. I do love him, perhaps even as much as he says he loves me. I just hadn’t planned on letting myself think that way and had I been him I would have held out longer. Just to be sure.

  Back home, at 2 a.m., I steal into the bed containing my husband. He does not wake. I do not sleep.

  There is no innocence left. I am on constant alert. When my phone pings, I jump as if stung. I anticipate reprimand, imagine when collecting my children from school the outrage of other, better, parents, who do not know that a deserter is in their midst. From Mark, I expect rows and recriminations but he is unspeaking; pale and constrained.

  Most days now, I linger, when I take hot drinks to the barn. I say things like, ‘I love watching you paint, it reminds me of when we first met.’ The words sound flimsy and ostentatious. I feel numb.

  I don’t know what I am hoping for. I think perhaps I want my husband to feel visible, and that all is not lost. I watch as he reaches for a small brush, licks his right thumb and forefinger, presses the hairs of the brush together and twists them into a sharp point.

  The cold tap over the sink drips insistently: it’s been doing so for weeks. It doesn’t impinge on Mark but for me, in the difficult, inhibited silence, it is as if our awkwardness is being counted out in half-seconds; the drip, drip, drip of marital erosion, falling daily on deaf ears. I twist around and tighten the tap.

  ‘Mark? Do you not want to say something?’

  From a pile of compressed metal tubes on the table, Mark selects one, unscrews its lid and squeezes a snail-shaped slick of navy blue on to a smooth, plastic board that is already daubed with pale, skin-coloured smudges. With the small brush, he introduces tiny dabs of blue to a couple of them. Contemplating the canvas where – as an eighteenth-birthday gift commissioned by her wealthy father – a teenage girl is coming of age in tender shades of fresh complexion, he says, ‘Yes. It needs a new washer. I’ll fix it.’

  I am adrift. Remorse and pain are like distant islands across a stretch of grey water – outlines only, remote but in sight. Even more alarming than feeling everything at once, with Angus, is feeling almost nothing now, here with Mark. Perhaps during our nights together, like a succubus Angus drains me dry – and I return home a husk, desiccated and empty.

  ‘I honestly didn’t mean it to go this far.’

  ‘No one ever does.’

  But they do. They mean it to go this far because it’s what they want. They mean to put obstacles in their own way. They mean to block their best route home. They mean it. I mean it. Why?

  Mark moves closer to the painting. He studies the girl’s brow, his expression steady but perplexed. Then he steps back, rubs his left arm across his forehead. He reminds me that he has four commissions to finish by Easter, he is teaching over the holidays and there’s Cornwall coming up this summer.

  He says, ‘Luce, I don’t have anything spare right now, for this.’

  ‘I don’t love him like I love you.’

  He blinks hard.

  ‘Love him?’

  Simultaneously, we try to register the impact of the blow I have inflicted.

  ‘Mark, it’s different. It’s nothing like us.’

  ‘Love him?’ he repeats.

  The shock is not yet absorbed but the damage is done. I think, Now, we can never go back to the way things were.

  ‘I had no idea that’s where you were going with this.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  I move closer to my husband and raise my hand to touch his face, but he says, ‘No. I’ll see you later,’ and I know better than to persevere. He turns away. He will not hear me now.

  Feverishly, we burn away the small hours.

  ‘Country girl, are you still awake? Xxx’

  ‘For you, yes, yes and yes. Xxx’

  ‘How soon can you come up again? Xxx’

  ‘Saturday. Xxx’

  ‘Do you fancy the cinema? Xxx’

  There is so much to know, so much to learn, so much to offer. We draw maps of ourselves, trace around our likes and dislikes, give shape to our strengths and dreams – to our weaknesses as well, though we make those sound like bewitching peculiarities, charming quirks that the other person (and only the other person) might especially appreciate. Back and forth and back and forth we go, our emails fleet, smooth, silent. He sometimes asks if we can speak instead but I won’t talk to Angus on the phone. I made it crystal clear, that first afternoon in Verity’s hold.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit absurd?’ he asks.

  He doesn’t understand why it matters so much but I can’t speak directly to Mark on the phone and I want so badly to be even-handed.

  ‘Parity is surely beside the point in this instance, ma cherie,’ Angus persists.

  ‘Exactly,’ I reply.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  I tell him I will never give him the one thing Mark will never have.

  ‘Do you see any irony in that?’

  ‘I am choosing not to.’

  My husband is profoundly deaf. It isn’t the first thing people notice about him. On the contrary, Mark manages his lack of hearing so well that people are usually astonished, even awed, when it dawns on them he hasn’t heard a word they’ve said. A lot of them don’t realize it at all, although when the subject comes up, which invariably it does sooner or later, occasionally someone will say, ‘I did wonder if there was something.’ However, because Mark’s speech and his skill for lip-reading are both damn near perfect, it doesn’t happen often – and those people who wonder can never quite define what that something is, either.

  Women especially are enthralled. ‘He’s amazing!’ they exclaim. ‘Just incredible!’ They look from him to me, and then back to him again: they tell me how dynamic he is, how clever, how good with our children. If they tell me how gorgeous he is, too, then I know what they are really thinking because people are very transparent; it doesn’t occur to most of them until they experience it first hand, that a man or woman’s sex appeal is entirely unrelat
ed to the range or frequency of their hearing. You don’t have to have a deaf husband for long before you come to recognize others’ poorly concealed astonishment that this, in fact, is the case.

  No one would think to use the word ‘disabled’ about Mark but he was incarcerated from babyhood in a remote, dull buzz that regressed to absolute silence by the time he was ten, or thereabouts. Without his hearing aids, a fanfare of trumpets in the same room would not register, and even with his aids, it would make almost no impact. He has never heard himself breathe. Born, however, with the ability to make out a few very faint sounds in the lower register he had just enough hearing as a small child to get by with a minimum aural grasp of some deep tonal shifts. These muted grunts and rumbles helped him to learn a bit about weight and emphasis in speech but nothing more: he has never heard a proper word in his life and even if by some miracle he could suddenly hear, he wouldn’t recognize one, either. However, until he was eight or nine he managed okay by keeping quiet and learning to lip-read more or less by default. After that, his peers took exception to the withdrawn child who didn’t sound right; they mocked and taunted him and he began to suffer. His parents dug into their savings, and a speech therapist with a coronet of blonde hair took on the boy with the deformed vowels and transformed him.

  It took years of hard work but Mark’s vowels separated, his consonants sharpened and his voice softened. He practised long and hard, learned tricks to cover for himself when faced with an immobile upper lip, a strong foreign accent or a beard, all of which make lip-reading difficult to impossible. But his speech therapist could not alter the fact that Mark had never heard a light breeze through leaves, or water trickling from a tap: nor had his attention been caught by the clink of a spoon upon china or the whip of a quickly turned page, or a thousand other things. Like the letter S, for example. S is the highest sound on the vocal register; I hadn’t known that before I met Mark. It is why, when he is dog-tired, his S’s elide a little and the slurring of speech that is common to people with profound hearing loss is marginally evident in him. I tried to imagine, when we first got together, how it must have been to learn the feel of a sound you will never hear, to get it right against your palate, and to trust that you knew how. He couldn’t explain it adequately, there being no common language to describe and discuss speech when one of you can’t hear it. It took him several months to get it perfect, was his answer.