The House at the End of Hope Street

Chapter Two





When Alba wakes all she can see are books. Thousands line every inch of every wall and the ceiling, some drift through the air like birds, lifting off from one shelf and settling on another; precarious stacks are spread across the floor like skyscrapers. For a moment, Alba thinks she’s dreaming.

Slowly, she slides out of the bed, stepping through the city of books to the nearest wall. She reaches up to touch the spines: Tractarians and the Condition of England, Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics, The Oxford Movement . . . Alba stops. When, a little drunk on sugar and cream, she’d stumbled into the room last night, it had been empty except for a bed. Now every historical text she’s ever read is at her fingertips.

Slowly Alba steps back, slips on a pile of books and hits the floor.

“Shit!” She snatches up The Liberal Ascendancy and hurls it at the wall. The room watches her silently, waiting. Whispered words float through the air. Alba shakes her head, wishing she could forget. But every seductive sentence Dr. Skinner ever said has seared itself onto her skin. At last Alba’s tears begin to fall. She pulls her knees to her chest and sobs.

—

Peggy is putting off getting out of bed. It is her birthday, after all, so she deserves a little lie-in. From the corner of the room comes a plaintive meow. She smiles at the big fat ginger cat attempting, yet again, to dig his claws into a chair leg.

“Oh, Mog, when are you going to give that up?” Peggy pats the bed, feeling a little sorry for her pet who is forever trying and failing to mark the furniture. “Now, come and give your mama a hug.” Lately Peggy has been missing her lover, Harry Landon, a little more than usual. She wants to be cuddled at night and kissed in the morning, though the archaic house rule of no overnight male visitors won’t allow it. And, after last night’s revelation, she’s missing him rather more. Not that she needs comforting. She’s resigned to her fate and isn’t scared. But since she might not have much time left, she’d rather like to spend some of it with him.

Peggy clicks her fingers at the cat. “Let it go, Mog, I haven’t got forever anymore.” The cat ambles across the carpet with a yawn. When Mog reaches the bed he stretches up to scratch his claws along the wood and Peggy just sighs, knowing he can’t make a mark.

Mog has haunted the house since it was built. In life he’d belonged to Grace Abbot, but he has been loved and spoiled by her six successors, all Abbot women chosen for their psychic skills, selflessness and sense of duty. But with the passing of her niece last summer, all Peggy has left now are second cousins. And they, without a flicker of foresight or a touch of telepathic thought, will never do. So, for the first time, it seems as though someone outside the family will inherit Hope Street. Perhaps, with her extraordinary sense of sight, Alba might be the one. But she would need extraordinary strength, too, and she doesn’t have that. At least, not yet. The recipe for running the house on Hope Street is special indeed: four parts psychic ability, one part patience, two parts fortitude, three parts altruism, and Peggy has yet to find every ingredient in another woman.

Mog leaps onto the bed, making dips in the duvet as he pads to Peggy’s outstretched hand. When he’s feeling frisky Mog roams the house to startle the residents, who can feel but not see him. After he died, to his never-ending annoyance, Mog has only been able to brush his silky fur against skin and momentarily leave his paw prints on the softest surfaces, but never make satisfyingly solid scratches.

“Hello, Moggy.” Peggy settles back into a cloud of pillows to gaze up at the ceiling, while Mog pushes his nose into her armpit. A vast skylight is cut into the ceiling, so she can fall asleep studying the stars. She doesn’t know their real names, preferring mysteries to facts, but loves to trace her fingers along their shapes. She wonders if she’ll be lucky enough to land among them when she dies. Peggy closes her eyes and, a moment later, feels a scrap of paper land on her nose. She picks it up and reads:

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

“I need advice about my successor, Anne Abbot.” Peggy rips the paper into tiny pieces. “Not a critique of my sleeping habits. And no one believes you had an affair with Jonathan Swift, no matter how many times you quote him.”

Entirely oblivious, Mog stretches and yawns. Peggy strokes his head, absently scratching his ears until he purrs and starts to drool. Watching the expanding patch of wetness on her sleeve, Peggy sighs. “You can sleep in my bed, you little minx, but I draw the line at drool.”

Mog opens a single eye and gives her a reproachful look. While they’re staring at each other, another note floats from the ceiling and settles between Mog’s ears. The cat shakes it off and Peggy picks it up.

Trust yourself and you shall know how to live.

Peggy hears a ripple of laughter through the walls, and sighs. “You are all entirely useless.”

—

Having finally stopped crying, pulled herself off the floor, and yanked open her bedroom door, Alba steps into the hallway. She has a headache, and needs fresh air. At the end of the hallway she finds a balcony and, hoping no one will mind, clicks open the French doors and walks out to lean over the railing. A low mist hangs over the front garden, floating beneath the branches of the willow trees and engulfing the cowslips. In the light Alba can see just how grand the garden is, and how far from the street. Wisteria twists over every inch of the house in a maze of branches and a blanket of flowers. Looking out across the town she can see the tops of every house and tree for miles. All of a sudden Alba is dizzy.

She turns, stumbles back into the hallway and trips over a small wooden stool. She steadies herself against the wall, perplexed because the stool wasn’t there a moment ago. Another wave of dizziness comes over her, and she sits down. She’s stepped into another world, one that makes no sense at all, with objects that don’t have the decency to obey the proper laws of physics. Just like me, Alba realizes. Having felt odd and out of place all her life, she’s finally found somewhere she fits perfectly.

From the walls the photographs take surreptitious glances at Alba. She catches the curious eyes of two sisters: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in England, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, cofounder of Newnham College in 1871. Though, Alba remembers, women weren’t actually awarded degrees until thirty-two years after that. She smiles. The idea that this house has been a temporary home to such prestigious figures sparks a tiny glow of hope inside her. Maybe, just maybe, it can help her too.

Suddenly aware that someone is coming, Alba jumps up off the stool and hurries down the corridor, away from the smell of cigarettes and sex drifting toward her. Alba is only halfway to her bedroom before a voice calls her back.

“Espera, por favor, espera!”

Alba can’t help turning. At the top of the stairs stands a woman so striking that Alba has to steady herself while she stares. Carmen Viera is tall and voluptuous, about ten years older than Alba, wearing a dress that clings to every curve. She has thick dark curls that float over her shoulders and fall down her back. She makes Alba feel scrawny and unkempt. But as she stares, Alba starts to see something else. The woman is scared, wearing her self-confidence like perfume: a heavy, sultry scent to distract onlookers from the broken, blackened pieces of herself she wants no one else to see. Her body is bruised underneath the dress; purple shadows that linger on, her olive skin scarred with cigarette burns, her heart cracked in so many pieces it’s a wonder it still beats.

“Hello,” Alba says, pleased that her sense of sight is already getting stronger.

“Ola.” The woman reaches out a delicate hand with long fingers. “I am Carmen.”

Alba hurries forward to take it, noticing the manicured nails and suddenly feeling self-conscious of her bitten-down stubs.

“Muito prazer.” Carmen smiles, wondering why this pretty girl is dressed so shabbily, why she hasn’t bothered to brush her messy hair or put on makeup. Carmen doesn’t understand why a woman would want to hide her own beauty. A gift from God should be put on display. Even though she barely believes in God anymore, after all that she’s been through, she still believes in this. “Okay,” Carmen says. “You come for breakfast now?”

“Well, um . . .” Alba stalls, not at all sure what she’s doing. “I—”

“It’s a special day.” Carmen cuts her off. “The day you come, and Peggy’s birthday. She will make a cake and—qual e a palavra?—yes, pancakes with cherries and cream. She is crazy for this stuff. You will stay for this, celebrate with me and Greer, nao?”

“I’m not sure . . . I don’t know,” Alba says. “Who’s Greer?”

“She lived here a few weeks already.” Carmen leans against the wall with a little sigh, apparently tired from standing for so long. “She is an actress, tall, long red hair, green eyes. I not met her yet but Peggy say she very glamorous.”

Oh, great, Alba thinks, another beautiful one. I’ve stumbled into a cult of extraordinarily beautiful women and I’m their sacrificial virgin. “Greer’s a funny name.”

Carmen shrugs, swallowing a comment about pots and kettles she recently heard but can’t now quite recall. “She is named from an actress, English with also red hair and many awards.”

“Oh.” Alba frowns. She finds films frivolous and knows nothing of actresses. “I’ve never heard of her.”

Carmen regards Alba curiously, still not quite able to make sense of her. The new girl seems so timid, so careful, shut up tight as a clam, that Carmen longs to shake her up. She wants to take this little mouse to the bar where she works, get her drunk and see her dance on table tops. Resolving to fulfill this ambition before she leaves the house, Carmen smiles, flashing bright white teeth against olive skin. “You will join us for this, nao?”

Unsettled by the directness of the question, Alba gathers herself and considers her options: she’d rather live on the streets than see her family again or, more specifically, her siblings, who will be utterly horrified by what happened. They will interfere, demand to know the truth, and she can’t tell them. Her mother is a different matter. She won’t throw around threats, in fact she won’t say a thing; she’ll just stare at her daughter until both are soaked in sadness. And that is more than Alba can bear at the moment.

“Yes,” Alba replies, “I’ll join you.”

—

Greer is nearly forty and has no home, no career and no fiancé. Two weeks ago the abysmal play she was struggling through finally closed. That same night she’d come home to find her fiancé with a twenty-two-year-old on the kitchen table. After throwing saucepans while he declared his love for this new girl, Greer ran out of his flat, wandering through a fog of tears until she finally found herself on Hope Street, standing in the garden of a house she’d never seen before.

After nearly two weeks Greer still isn’t completely used to its strange ways, but it no longer scares her. Like every other resident who lives there—breathing its air, eating its food, drinking its water—she has become entirely enchanted by her new home. Slowly, her heart is beginning to beat in time to its gentle pulse, and her lungs fill with its soft breath.

Now she sits up in bed to see something new in her bedroom: an enormous wooden wardrobe filling the opposite wall, with its doors flung open. Greer stares at rows and rows of clothes, at every kind of theatrical costume she could possibly imagine. To the left are those from her favorite era, the screwball comedies of the 1940s: dozens of A–line dresses and flared trousers, fitted shirts and pencil skirts. To the right, costumes from the 1950s: puffball skirts, halter-style tops and sweetie swing dresses. And in the middle, a row of Jane Austen: empire gowns and summer dresses with matching coats in linen, velvet and silk. Along the floor are vintage shoes, heels and flats, and hanging above the clothes, rows of hats.

“Oh my God,” Greer gasps. Of everything she’s seen so far, this is without a doubt her absolute favorite. The wardrobe beckons, enticing her out of bed. In a gap between a blue dress and a red skirt Greer can see the wardrobe is several meters deep. Tentatively she reaches out to the blue dress, hesitant to step inside behind the curtains of cotton and silk, almost expecting to see Mr. Tumnus trot out from behind the veils.

A delicate pea green dress catches her eye and the memory rises up again, the one that never really leaves, that always flutters at the edges of her mind. It pushes forward now, and suddenly Greer is numb to everything except the past. Standing in front of a hundred colors, all she can see is her daughter’s face, the bright green eyes blinking up at her. For, despite the doctor’s saying it was impossible, that all babies are born with blue or brown eyes, Lily’s were green. Bright shining green, like leaves lit by sunlight. Greer will never forget gazing into them for the first and last time. The one person she loved more than anyone in the world, she met for only a moment.

Greer bites her lip and swallows the memory, pushing it back to where it belongs, locked in her heart and held there, a private pain that is hers and hers alone. She has to focus on the present now and find something to wear. She’s hardly in the mood to socialize, to shine and smile, but now it’s time. After twelve days of hiding out in her bedroom with a broken heart, she must finally meet her housemates. Greer takes a deep breath. She can do this—she is an actress, after all.

—

Alba sits at the kitchen table, pushing the remains of a barely touched piece of birthday cake around her plate, sneaking looks at Greer, who’s dressed in a green silk gown with red satin heels and matching bolero, looking as though she’s attending the Oscars, except that she’s hardly smiling. Alba studies the two women: where Carmen is stunning and sexy, Greer is more subtly beautiful. They both dress impeccably. Feeling self-conscious and out of place, Alba tries to think of something to say. Carmen munches her way through the bowl of cherries, Greer chats halfheartedly about a production of Twelfth Night at the theater in town and Peggy licks out a bowl of cream.

“How many people live here?” Alba ventures.

“That depends on the season.” Peggy lifts her head up from the bowl, a peak of cream on the tip of her nose. “On the weather and the amount of despair in the air. We’re always the most crowded around Christmas.” She swipes off the cream with her finger. “But right now we’re virtually empty. Before you turned up last night it was just the three of us, wasn’t it?”

She looks at Greer, who flashes Alba a film-star smile, and at Carmen, who nods, then accidentally swallows a cherry pip and coughs. Alba glances around the kitchen at the multicolored helium balloons floating around the room, bobbing in midair just above their heads. How funny, Alba thinks, that they don’t float up to the ceiling.

“We’re very happy to have you here,” Peggy says. “Aren’t we, girls?”

“Absolutely.” Greer grins, momentarily blinding Alba, who blinks. “The more the merrier.”

Nodding, Carmen drains her glass and coughs again. “Sim, I never have sisters, I always want some. I can take you drinking, we can go shopping, get makeups, go dancing.” She grins. “We will have much fun.”

“Oh.” Alba tries not to look too horrified at the suggestion of socializing with someone so luscious and loud, someone with whom she has absolutely nothing in common, excepting the broken heart. “Well, um, I don’t really know . . .”

“Cream?” Peggy hides a smile and offers Alba the bowl.

“No, thanks—”

“Pancake?” Greer says perkily, wishing she were upstairs in bed.

“No, I’m—”

“Cherry?” Carmen drops one onto Alba’s plate.

“No, but”—Alba eyes it—“thank you.” As she pops the cherry into her mouth, Alba feels a prickle of anticipation along her spine, the same sensation she used to get as a girl the moment before seeing her grandmother’s ghost. She glances up and there, sitting in the kitchen sink, is a young woman: tall, thin and entirely transparent. She’s in her early twenties, very pretty, with long blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a long dress dotted with daisies. She gives a little wave, kicks her transparent legs against the kitchen counter and smiles.

She reminds Alba of hippies, flower power and feminism, of an essay she once wrote about the effects of the pill on the liberation of working-class women in 1960s Britain. The young woman waves again, and it’s only then that Alba realizes she is the only one who can see her.