He hated this room. A pointless, dead area smelling of mould and the remembered smell of the commode, a horrible place to have in your house. Was he mad? Why was it there? Whose fault was it if not his? He could have got rid of it whenever he wanted.
He turned the knob and the door whined open. The first thing he noticed was the flickering light that had no right to be there. A small flame shivered on the mantelpiece above the black hole of the grate. The air was icy. Something was on the chaise longue, indistinct, stretched out. Still steeling himself for the ghosts and ghouls of imagination, he turned on the light, saw the crappy old backpack slumped on the floor, and was washed by a wave of relief so huge it swept him back towards the mellow wistfulness of before.
‘Get up,’ he said.
She had taken the heavy brocade curtains from under the window and completely buried herself, head and all.
‘Get up,’ he said, but she didn’t move.
‘Oh, come on.’ He sat down on the end of the chaise longue, squashing her feet and making her move them. ‘I know you’re in there,’ and even now when he knew who it was he still flinched a little when she sat up and put her head out, as if she might have been a corpse thing, the woman in room 237.
‘What the fuck,’ he said softly. He couldn’t be angry. He tried but it wasn’t working. She looked the same. A red scarf had been tied round her hair but it had come adrift and hung down. She hadn’t been asleep, her eyes were wide awake. No way she could have slept through the racket downstairs, the music, him bawling at the cats, singing, for Christ’s sake.
‘I was sheltering from the rain,’ she said.
He shook his head and almost laughed, then looked away. ‘So,’ he said, ‘back to the poor old fucker with the open door.’
‘Your door was unlocked.’ She pulled the curtains round her. ‘I knocked but there was no one in. I have a new camp now. Not in the old place. The rain got in and it’s all flooded.’
She’d waited for spring. It made sense. The bluebells coming out, the smell of grass, wild garlic. What must he have sounded like, roaring away? What stupid things had he said, what stupid songs, stupid everything. His palm was on fire. Poisoned. Amputation.
‘I was going to go when the rain stopped,’ she said, ‘you’d never even have known.’
‘Fucking cheek. I thought you were a ghost.’
‘It’s all ghosts round here,’ she said.
He walked to the mantelpiece. ‘Still talking shite,’ he said and blew out the tea light. ‘So it’s OK is it for you to come in lighting candles and setting the place on fire?’
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I set up camp in a hurry. My fault. The rain came in, a river, I had to, anyway, so, I wondered how you were.’
‘Well, I’m OK,’ he said.
‘What’s the matter with your hand?’ she said. ‘You’re holding it funny.’
‘Cat.’
‘Let’s see.’
He turned his back, stood up. ‘Downstairs,’ he said. ‘Now. Freezing. Turn the light off.’
He went down and waited in the pigsty mess of a place that he’d not cleaned since, oh Christ, poked about in the woodbox, put a log and a few lumps of coal on the fire. Someone in his house again; always strange, but this time stranger still, and for no reason he could explain. Thank God he was pissed. How anyone coped with anything otherwise he had no idea. He sat down and glared at the fire as if it was an oracle. She appeared a moment later in the same long coat she’d worn before, only this time it looked as if it had been cleaned, and there was a lily of the valley brooch on the lapel. The red scarf was round her neck. He didn’t want to speak, all too weird, just sat and watched her holding her hands out to the now blazing fire.
‘If you start with all that weird stuff again you’re out on your ear,’ he heard himself say, ‘right? Rain or no rain.’
‘What’s wrong with your hand?’
It was lying on his knee, palm up, with a dark line surrounded by red in the middle of it.
‘What did you do?’
‘Fucking cat attacked me.’
‘What were you doing to it?’
‘Dancing with it.’
She smiled. ‘I can see you,’ she said, ‘dancing with your cat in the middle of the night.’
He drew back when she approached, but she came on relentless and dropped down onto one knee in front of his chair, and he didn’t want her nearness at all, it was all too much now, too late, too fat, too smelly, too gross. ‘Give me your paw,’ she said and grabbed his hand. It hurt like hell and she felt him stiffen. ‘Hurts?’ she said. He nodded. She spread it out with both of hers. ‘Got to come out,’ she said, ‘sorry, just got to,’ and removed the brooch from her lapel.
‘Oh God Christ,’ he said, ‘not that.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, like all those kindly ladies in the far-off infant clinics who gave him stickers for being a brave boy. It was excruciating. The silver clack as it opened, the sliding of the pin swiftly under his skin. Air hissing through his teeth. She was strong. With one hand she held him firm, with the other she plied her needle. ‘Wo-oe’s me, wo-e’s me –’ she said, sing-song.
The pain was vile and made him want to puke. They always said that, doesn’t hurt, course it fucking hurts.
‘the acorn’s not
