The Pagan House Read online

  ‘We thought we were going to die,’ Edgar said.

  Warren’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’

  ‘The plane went into a dive and kept going and it looked like we were going to crash and everyone thought we were going to die. The big plane. Jumbo jet. The one we came from London on.’

  ‘Wow. A near-death experience. That’s the sort of thing that changes a person,’ said Warren.

  ‘Yes. I think so too,’ said Edgar.

  Warren had kind eyes. He was very well shaved and his skin was smooth. He drove carefully, without show. ‘We’re coming off the thruway now,’ he said. ‘That was the interstate. We’re on three sixty-five now. Not far to go.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Edgar pointed to what looked like an artwork from one of Jeffrey’s magazines. By the side of the road, surrounding a dark wooden shack, four large men in shorts and T-shirts sat impassively on garden chairs with guns on their laps.

  ‘That’s the bingo hall. It’s run by the Onyatakas, the local Indian tribe. It’s pretty small-potatoes stuff, cleaners going there to gamble their money, welfare checks. It’s a sad state of affairs. They want to build a casino but no one thinks the Governor will let them.’

  ‘Does my dad know about that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Eddie. I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Is he at the house?’

  ‘Uh, not yet, I think he might have been delayed a couple of days, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy your time with us.’

  Monica stirred and yawned and stretched. Her leather jacket that she had been using as a pillow creaked. ‘God, I needed that sleep. Where are we?’

  ‘We’ve just come off the interstate.’

  ‘There’s a bingo hall. It’s run by Indians. They carry guns,’ Edgar said.

  ‘You’re not meant to call them Indians. Isn’t it First Nation or Native Americans or something?’ said his mother.

  ‘This tribe calls itself Indians so it’s okay,’ Warren said, and winked to Edgar. ‘We’re on the road to Onyataka.’

  They drove through small towns, past fire stations and sports fields and boxy suburbs where everything was green and white and red, as if people here lived in a perpetual Christmas.

  ‘Where are you from, Warren?’ asked Mon.

  ‘I’m from Ireland, more or less Dublin but not quite. But people out here, I might as well be from South Africa or Australia or the moon.’

  ‘We weren’t actually expecting to be met by anyone.’ In her habitual arrogance she had awarded herself the right to speak for Edgar. How could someone so supposedly close to him not see the change in him? ‘Are you a neighbour of Fay’s?’

  ‘No actually, I live there. With her. In the house.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Mon in her suspicious tone, her voice going thin and accusing. Edgar hoped Warren hadn’t noticed the rudeness.

  ‘Has she not said? I’ve been there some time. Help out a bit you know. Muck in. She’s a lovely lady.’

  ‘Yes. She is.’

  ‘And I know how fond she is of you. Of both of you,’ he added.

  Mon did not like to be flattered. Edgar knew this, Warren clearly did not. They drove on in silence, into the town of Onyataka (Onyataka welcomes careful drivers!), and Edgar started to pay attention. This was a bigger place than he had been expecting, there were theaters here and a cinema, the expected fire station, the unexpected sex shop; a drunk stumbled into a boarded-up store window but kept his beer can steady throughout in its brown-paper bag, and a pet shop, a video store, and—Onyataka hopes you come back soon!—they were out of town again.

  ‘I thought …’ Edgar said.

  ‘What’s that, Eddie?’

  ‘That we were, that my grandmother, lived in Onyataka.’

  ‘It’s the nearest town, for postal purposes that’s where we are, but actually we live a few miles along, in Vail. The towns of Creek and Vail. You’ll see in a few minutes.’

  Creek, which announced itself to be the smallest city in New York State, welcomed careful drivers no less than Onyataka. It was met by Edgar through half-closed eyes. This was not how he had intended to arrive, sleepily unalert; he forced himself to notice things—a restaurant, a factory, a pizza parlour, a gas station, an office-supplies store, white wooden houses whose front gardens, or yards, he supposed, were open to the pavement where bicycles lay down—

  ‘There’s a farmer’s market out back there on Thursdays,’ said Warren.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Mon.

  —a video store was neighbour to a doctor’s office and a bookshop, none of which looked open; an impeccably healthy gang of teenagers in jeans and grey sweatshirts lounged in a corner of a baseball field.

  ‘You’ll like it here, Eddie. There’s lots of life. Kids and trees and parks and so forth. Do you play soccer?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Of course he does,’ Mon said. ‘God, it’s so long since I’ve been here and the place hasn’t changed a bit. Time just stands still, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the Company headquarters? That’s where your grandfather worked.’

  They passed an ornate, low-slung stone building topped by turrets, which looked as if the architect hadn’t been able to decide whether to build a castle or a bungalow so had invented some unworkable compromise between the two.

  ‘Did my dad work there as well?’

  Mon didn’t say anything. She scoffed silently, as she usually did when her ex-husband was mentioned in the same sentence as money or work.

  ‘I don’t know, Eddie. He might have had a holiday job there when he was young. Most everybody here has worked for the company at some time. It’s a company town.’

  ‘Company town,’ Mon repeated, in a sort of wistful voice, and Edgar could tell she had been smitten with the same sour nostalgia or sentimentality that connected to those moments in London when she stayed up late looking at old photographs, playing records and drinking bourbon.

  ‘It’s got a very interesting history, the company. Creek was where the workers lived, the managers lived in Vail. It all grew out of the Onyataka Association. Nineteenth century. But you must know all about it, Monica, through Mike, Perfectionism, free love, Utopia.’

  ‘Mike didn’t go in for history tours. And I don’t think Perfectionism would ever have been one of his interests.’

  Warren laughed politely to indicate that he had noticed a joke had been made.

  ‘And here we are. Here’s the house now.’

  ‘I’ve always liked it. Look, Edward.’

  Edgar looked. He too liked the house, very much. It could be drawn very simply, as two intersecting triangles with a horizontal line at the top for the roof. Blue-painted wood with white shutters and weird little carved heads whenever a pipe went into or popped out of the wall, weathervane and TV aerial and a chimney behind each of the gables, it accorded to his idea of what a house should look like. It was the house he had tried to draw when he was a young child. It was the house he furnished when they played their game.

  Warren opened the screen door for them. The front door had been left hospitably ajar. They walked along the hallway, past a curving staircase, black and white photographs on green-papered walls, to the kitchen, where an old lady was in the unsteady process of rising from a chair.

  ‘Fay!’

  His grandmother, whom Mon confused with a kiss on both her cheeks, was grandmotherly small and white-haired, in a blue print dress.

  ‘If I remember you, Monica, you’d like a cup of tea after your trip.’

  Her voice was clear and youthful, her face a rivery marvel of lines, which shifted and twisted and showed new tributaries when Mon said how well Fay was looking. Her eyes were blue, like Edgar’s.

  Edgar made up for the confusion his mother had wrought with a candid smile and an English gentleman’s firm handshake.

  ‘And Edward. You look so much like your father, you know. Would you like a chocolate milk, or are you too grown-up for that sort of thing?’

  Delighted at
being identified as looking like his father, Edgar replied that, yes, he would love a chocolate milk and, no, a straw would not be unwelcome, and after Warren had brought in their bags, he made the tea and poured Edgar a glass of chocolate milk, which Warren suggested and Edgar agreed was the perfect thing after long plane and car rides in the height of summer.

  Fay took them on a tour of the house, which passed slowly, because she needed to sit and rest at least once in every room, and Edgar, unconsciously, until Mon pointed out what he was doing and made him too embarrassed to continue, would position himself behind his grandmother’s shoulder, like a servant or a guard.

  Edgar had been given the sleeping porch whose ceiling and outer walls were made of glass. It jutted from the house at the back, looking over the rose garden.

  ‘We thought it might be fun for you to sleep here,’ Warren said.

  ‘Warren has moved out into Frank’s room.’

  ‘We’re so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a move,’ Warren said.

  ‘He cleans up after himself. He’s very tidy,’ Fay said, and Mon looked meaningfully at Edgar to remind him of his house-guest responsibilities.

  In the corridor, Fay sat on a chair after failing to make it quite to the picture window.

  ‘On a clear day you can see all the way to Onyataka Depot.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mon.

  ‘Good,’ said Edgar.

  ‘You can see the Company building from the corner of the window. The Administration building, not the factory. That’s in Creek, of course. And across the way is the Mansion House. They have regular tours. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.’

  ‘I’m sure I would,’ said Edgar, politely unconvinced.

  ‘But tell me, what would you fancy doing in your time with us?’

  The wording of the question intrigued Edgar in its imputation that he might operate in a world of fancy rather than necessity. It supposed an alternative Edgar, foppish, with a butterfly mind, who went where things took him, who carried a battered brown-leather suitcase covered with faded stickers of faraway countries and who might even own a unicycle that he had disciplined himself to ride. The real Edgar was driven by imperatives. Imperative number one was to further investigate his capacity the first chance he got. This was not a subject to share, except he was looking forward to a moment of companionship with his father when he might somehow imply his new state, maybe eating burgers at a lunch counter, men of the world together, two guys.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Edgar.

  ‘You only have to say. Supper will be in the kitchen. Warren has put out towels in your rooms. I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Edgar, in the bathroom, splashing water on his hair and pulling it casually into spikes, listened to his mother and grandmother in the corridor.

  ‘Who is Warren?’ his mother asked. ‘How long has he been here?’

  ‘I don’t know where I’d be without him,’ said Fay.

  When Edgar went downstairs—after lying on his bed and flirting with his capacity, which he abandoned and zipped away when he heard footsteps going past into Fay’s room next door; and after gazing out of the window and wondering what Onyataka Depot might be and whether he would be here long enough to make the acquaintance of the blonde girls strolling past, who looked so unapproachably healthy and complete; and after sneaking into his father’s old room to run a finger along the spines of the science-fiction paperbacks in the bookcase; and after looking into the Music Room to examine some of the record albums, the glowering 1970s faces—Mon and Fay and Warren were already in the kitchen. His mother was wearing a black T-shirt with red Asian script printed on it that Edgar hadn’t seen before. Her hair was hidden beneath the turban of a bath towel. A large ginger cat snored in a basket by the stove.

  ‘What do you think of the house?’ Warren asked.

  ‘It’s really nice,’ Edgar said, somewhat gruffly, because he preferred his voice to err towards brusque manliness rather than the shrill castrato it sometimes became.

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ said Warren. To which Mon was about to protest but stopped when she realized that he was talking to Fay, who performed her astonishing smile again.

  4

  Edgar awoke in light. Foreign dusty smells, his penis gripped hard in his hand, the taste of night and linen in his mouth. He encouraged this moment of utter unfamiliarity to stretch, with him growing inside it—and that first, good, moment was succeeded by one even better, when he remembered where he was, a new-found place.

  At home, he would hear traffic in the main road, the groaning of water-pipes, the drone of his mother’s radio on those days that Jeffrey wasn’t staying over, all the rumble of a London morning. Here, in Vail, there was birdsong outside and frogs croaking, and a rustle of leaves, all of which were delightful at first and then unnerving. The dawn light pouring through the glass walls and ceiling of the sleeping porch made the room seem shipboard, the sky turned to sea. He stayed in bed, stretching, yawning, waiting for the voices and clatters of a usual day or the reassuring sound of his mother, until hunger drove him out in search of food.

  Edgar, starving for carbohydrates and fruit juice, in his new chinos and T-shirt, stepped out on to the landing. He had expected the business of the morning to be transacted all around him but he seemed to be the only one up. There had been voices; now he heard only the creak of the corridor floor under his feet, the squeak of the stairs. On the ground floor he could walk more freely and soon was joined by an imaginary companion, a mincing European, maybe Italian or French, could even be Spanish, who wore flamboyantly long white sleeves with lace ruffs and carried a clipboard and assiduously noted down all of Edgar’s instructions.

  ‘I think we’ll need to move the kitchen from here to here,’ Edgar said commandingly. ‘And the bathroom, of course.’ He felt a slight pang for both rooms, which had done him no harm, but he must be ruthless, make his stamp of ownership plain. ‘And I think we’ll lower that ceiling and raise that one, and maybe that floor ought to become that wall, and do you think two indoor swimming-pools are too much …?’

  He paused, tilted his head, cocked his ear, allowed space for his flouncy architect-designer to offer his highly cultivated, overpaid, artistically considered response, which lordly Edgar merely brushed aside—

  ‘… or not enough at all?! I want four swimming-pools thank you very much. Ha! And I want a snooker room they-ah, and a games room they-ah, and my father will be in his study, there …’ and here Edgar lowered his voice, squeezed his chin flat to his chest and waddled as if he were the fattest man in the world into his grandmother’s living room, narrowly avoiding the early-morning boy-trap of a wire magazine rack, ‘… and here, and here-ah, what are we going to do? Hmn? What are we going to do with you? What in the world are we going to do with you? What in the whole—’ Edgar shot a nervous look around before continuing ‘—fucking world are we going to do with you? What do you think, Alfonso? What’s your considered opinion now, my friend? Answer me Alfonso. Answer me, right now! Oh God, I’m so bored with your ideas, is that what they teach you at the Sorbonne? You’re fired. That’s right. Fired. I shall draw up the plans myself. Goodbye.’

  The rejected architect-cum--designer threw himself on his ex-employer’s mercy. He was losing all dignity: he cajoled, threatened, pleaded, he wept. He poured down curses on Edgar, then repented, blessed him, his family, his mother, who reminded him of his own, after which ensued a long impossible-to-follow story set in a hillside village, involving a donkey, two gypsies and the winter wind, and Edgar had had quite enough. This display, quite frankly, sickened him.

  ‘Enough! Alfonso! Please. Remember you are a man.’

  Edgar made his heart hard and turned his face away and went back to the kitchen, and the broken Alfonso crawled after him, still weeping, his suede jeans smeared with dirt from the floor, his black curls tumbling, his white bullfighter’s shirt ripped.

  Edgar poured
himself a glass of chocolate milk from the refrigerator and downed it in one thirsty morning gulp and poured himself a second, which he measured against his fingers and sipped slowly from, contemplating his day.

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘Good morning, Mother.’

  Mon looked at him sharply; she mistrusted Edgar at his most formal. She opened the refrigerator, withdrew from it an apple and a bowl of pineapple chunks, which she assembled on top of two slices of white bread in an approximation of the breakfast she ate at home. After a couple of mouthfuls, and an expression of dismay at how much sugar had been added to the pineapple, she was ready for conversation.

  ‘Who were you speaking to?’

  ‘Nobody,’ Edgar said, quickly and surprised, before guiltily remembering the corpse of Alfonso that lay in the hallway, his clothes grubby and bloodied, his unbeating heart clutched forlorn in his hand, an unwanted offering that he had held out as his last dying hope.

  ‘Why are you looking so shifty then?’

  ‘I’m not looking shifty.’

  ‘You’re looking shifty. Do you know what time it is?’

  This was a familiar technique of his mother’s, to follow one question quickly with another, unrelated, one. It kept people on the back foot.

  ‘No. What time is it?’

  ‘It’s a quarter to six.’

  ‘Oh really? It’s a nice day isn’t it? Did you sleep well?’ Edgar asked, nimbly using his mother’s devices against her.

  ‘Jetlag,’ his mother grimly said.

  They breakfasted to the rumble of Tom the cat snoring in his basket. Edgar ate toasted English muffins with butter and ham. He drank orange juice. His mother drank tea. They briefly speculated as to why English muffins were thought to be English, and Mon said English usually meant something sneaky in this country, and she broadened the topic to include the very unFrench phenomenon of so-called French toast and then they returned to silence. The day could turn out to be a long one but he didn’t care; this was the leisurely part of his American trip, here in this fine house, submerged by the agreeable fog of jetlag, waiting for his father to come.