“What is happening, John?”
John got to his feet and closed the window, shutting the drunken voices from the garden.
“Get in the living room, right away, shut the door and stay there until I tell you to come out!” he ordered.
“Yes, John,” she answered timidly, afraid of his rising anger as much as the noise from the cellar.
Her heart hammering, she went into the next room and closed the door.
“Don’t think about them, you silly old girl,” she said out loud. “Let John deal with it. Just don’t let them into your head, and it will all go away.”
Then she heard a female voice scream something, it could have been “help us,” but she wasn’t sure, since the voice was so muffled. This was followed by the sound of furniture being knocked over.
“Don’t listen to it!” she told herself, rapping her knuckles hard against her temples. Then she switched on the television and turned the volume up as high as it would go. The program was about gardening. A man with a beard was advising the viewers how to prune clematis plants. She turned the channel, a young woman in a silver dress was singing a song before a panel of judges. As she forced herself to concentrate on the program Marion’s breathing became steadier.
“It’s all right,” she told herself. “John will deal with it everything is all right.
? ? ?
SHE WOKE IN the middle of the night with the vague sense of having had an important dream, but when she tried to remember it, the dream remained forever beyond her grasp. It seemed these days she couldn’t get through a night without waking three or four times, and usually it took forever to get back to sleep again. According to the glowing green hands of the clock, it was 3:15 a.m. The heat in her room was heavy and dark, pressing down on her body, filling her mouth and nose, making it difficult to breathe.
“Help us.” She could have been wrong, but she was almost sure that was what the voice had said. “Help us.”
On her way downstairs to get a glass of water, she passed her brother’s room. His door was closed, but she could see a band of light shining through the gap below. Muttering came from within. She stopped by the door to listen:
“Never any peace—these women never give me any bloody peace. What am I to do with them? Tell me that? I try to do my best for them, but what thanks do I get? What thanks? All I want is a little bit of love and comfort—is that too much to ask for?” Then came the huge and terrible sound of him sobbing.
At that moment the urge gripped her to go into his room and tell him she would no longer stand him having the visitors down there. That it was wrong and he must let them go immediately. The whole affair was making her sick with worry. She put her hand on the doorknob and was about to turn it, then stopped. Whenever she thought about defying him, an invisible brace tightened around her chest, making it difficult to breathe. What was she afraid of? John had never raised a hand to her, yet sometimes he looked at her like she was a drowsy fly he could crush between finger and thumb anytime he wanted to.
THE BOX
Mrs. Morrison the housekeeper had been cleaning John’s room when Marion heard her scream. The look on her face when she came out carrying the cardboard box, you would have thought she’d just witnessed a murder. The housekeeper went straight into the front room where Mother was having morning coffee and reading the Telegraph.
Mrs. Morrison’s gruff voice was easier to understand from the other side of the heavy oak door. Marion picked out “filth”—“indecent”—“disgusting” from the muffled flow. Mother’s speech, warbling and reedy as the call of a waterbird, was harder to decipher. Before the door handle had finished turning, Marion had scampered away and found another vantage point beneath the dining room table.
She caught the bitter odor of cigarette smoke and then saw Mother’s polished gray heels click rapidly down the parquet floor and stop by the telephone nook.
“And she thinks she can lecture me about decency, Philip,” said Mother, letting a nervous flurry of ash fall onto the parquet floor. “What with her Sharon having those kids by different fathers and not one of them sticking around a minute after they were born.” She spoke loudly enough to make sure that Mrs. Morrison in the living room could hear too.
Marion crept upstairs to look for John, but he was nowhere to be found. Knowing that both Mother and Mrs. Morrison refused to go down there for fear of rats and spiders, he was probably hiding in the cellar. Thirty minutes later Dad arrived home from the warehouse. Sucking on a boiled sweet she had found, still wrapped, beneath the dining room table, Marion listened to his conversation with Mrs. Morrison.
“Come on, Peg, you know what teenage lads are like. He’s got a healthy curiosity about things.”
“What I saw wasn’t healthy, Mr. Zetland,” declared Mrs. Morrison, her voice upper-class with indignation.
“Just let me deal with it.”
“Mrs. Zetland informed me that as of today my services would no longer be required.”
Dad’s sigh was long and low, like the air being let out of a bicycle tire.
“Come on, don’t be daft. You’re like one of the family. I’ll call Dr. Dunkerly, get him to bring her something. She’ll have forgotten it all by tomorrow.”
Then Dad plucked something out of his wallet, put it into Mrs. Morrison’s hand.
Marion folded the wrapper of the boiled sweet very tightly and squeezed it between the floorboards.
“When I am grown up with a husband and children, I will come back and find this and remember how things were when I was a child,” she vowed to herself, then scrambled out from beneath the table.
Through the dining room window Marion watched Dad place the box near the wall of ivy at the far end of the garden. She just caught the sound of him whistling something cheery as he went down the back steps to the cellar.
Marion slipped out through the kitchen door. It was a damp, heavy day and the pitter-patter of fat raindrops flattened her hair. Slowly she approached the box, each step feeling like a sin as her black patent “indoor shoes” pressed into the mud and specks of mire freckled her white socks.