12

2018

DURING THE BLACK HOURS of the night, Orla would wake alone in a place that she did not recognise. When dawn slid under the shutters and brought with it the reprieve of the light, she could hardly stand the relief.

Mornings are a promise, afternoons are a heartbreak. Evenings are sly, and they deliver you into the thin arms of each dark night. But mornings hold such possibility, the tangible weight of better: today will be different. When the evening comes (such dreadful hours), the promise of the day has been broken because nothing is different – you are still yourself. To return to that, every day, to return to the truth of who and where you are, is more than a person should have to bear.

Orla had always measured time not in minutes but in light, and so the early evenings were painful. This winter, she raged at how the world took longer to wake. She came to loathe the dark with a clenched, ragged hatred.

The solitude she had welcomed so readily when they first moved, the isolation that she had held both arms out to embrace, now threatened to overwhelm. She had always been so perfectly complete in her own company, but since Christmas it was almost unbearable to be here alone. Orla went through the house several times a day to close any open doors – she could not stand an open door. The possibility of what she might see through it, what might catch her unaware, was too much. This house had too many corners she could not monitor, too many fertile rooms that might birth something horrific the moment her back was turned. She made a great effort not to think about the double-child she had seen, nor the kick of a leg as it disappeared through a doorway.

Orla retreated from the wilds of the house to the confines of her studio. Sam followed her up each day and stayed next to her while she worked, silently painting his own versions of the world. His muteness was amplified in the expanse of the house, his habitual noises distorted by the vast spaces.

Three quick knocks pulled Orla from her focus. She resented the interruption – time was tight to deliver to the gallery. A few of the smaller pieces were already complete, and she was rather proud of a series of miniature oils on board depicting abstract, rainy windows. Two larger landscapes of the back fields were nearly done, but the main focus of her return to work was the trio of seascapes that still needed attention.

She stretched on her stool and noted how the day had slipped away, far beyond the trees. The fields to the back of the house ran all the way to the horizon, expanses of frozen, desolate soil. Some of the hedgerows kept their stubborn green through winter, but for the most part the land was bare and brown and tired. Bridie stirred in her carrycot in the corner of the studio; they’d had such bad nights with teething that she was sleeping too much during the day, but at least it meant more time for Orla to work.

The knocks came again and Orla stood. ‘Sam? Are you hungry? What will we have?’

Sam rounded the corner, paint all over his face, and she saw bruised shadows beneath his eyes. He shrugged and wiped his hands on his T-shirt.

‘Don’t do that, my love; keep it nice, please.’

All through lunch she was distracted – poor Bridie waited patiently for her next mouthful of yoghurt, while Orla stared out of the window and held the spoon a few inches away from the baby’s face. Sam finished his sandwich and Orla didn’t even notice when he left the table and went back up to his playroom; she only realised he was gone when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

In the afternoon, Toby enlisted Sam to help him plant spring bulbs – pink ranunculus and delicate lily of the valley – and Sam knelt and put his hands in the soil as Toby explained how it would work, how the bulbs would sleep under their blanket of earth until they were woken up by the sun.

Orla left Sam outside with Toby, put Bridie down for an afternoon nap and returned to the studio; the unfinished paintings nagged at her. On her way upstairs, she closed the doors to the spare room and the family bathroom – two doors she knew were shut when she had come down for lunch. She paused in front of each one and closed her eyes as she reached for the handles and pulled the doors to.

From the studio window, she watched Toby and Sam make their way along the flower beds with the bulb planter. The baby monitor sat silent on the trestle table; Bridie occasionally whimpered in her sleep like a puppy.

The scents of linseed oil and turpentine filled the room; Orla loved the sharp, chemical smell. Gradually, as she slipped deeper into concentration, all sounds fell away and all Orla heard was the beat of her own blood inside her head. Time stilled, became irrelevant. The light inside the room trembled and changed; she barely noticed when the sun turned from pale lemon to deepest gold and took with it the meagre warmth.

When her back began to bother her and the good light was gone from the room, Orla put down her brush and rolled her neck a few times, cracked her knuckles and stood up. Sam would be wanting supper – she could hear him next door, the mechanical music from his kid’s ‘computer’ came faintly from the playroom. A Christmas present from Eva and George, it had been a big hit, and although Orla knew they’d bought it because they hoped it might encourage him to speak, she didn’t really mind. Sam was too clever to be tricked like that.

Orla wrapped the larger brushes in cling film and was startled by how dark the colours had come out. These three seascapes had begun in the palest of blues and greys; along the way she’d added touches of deeper colour, but she hadn’t intended to make them quite so moody. The sea in front of her was bottle green, the sky almost navy. Streaks of orange shone in the waves, like harbour lights reflected, and the overall effect reminded her of dark, dangerous water at night. She hadn’t quite noticed what she’d done, so absorbed was she in the texture of the surface and the movement of the knife.

Bridie was half-sleep when Orla retrieved her from her cot, floppy and weighty and warm. Orla started down the stairs and almost fell when something large thumped into one of the cathedral windows. It hit high up, near the apex of the window, and dropped quickly out of sight. Then another, shaking the glass in its frame, on the other side – a slender, black bird. She watched it break its neck and tumble. Another followed, then two more in quick succession; each bang sent a shock of adrenaline down her spine and Bridie was howling and the dying birds left oily smears on glass that was aflame with the setting sun.

More birds followed, too many to count; one by one they threw themselves against the windows, those enormous, beautiful windows that snatched each bird and tossed them, broken, to the ground: tall nets of glass to catch death from the sky.

Toby was already running across the driveway, Sam close behind but struggling to keep up and distraught. ‘Don’t come out! Stay there!’

Orla stayed in the shelter of the porch and listened to the noises, the sickening smacks of more birds against glass. The birds were long and delicate, something like a swift or a swallow.

Sam was crying, tripping, flailing at his head with his hands.

‘Bring him in, for God’s sake, Toby – bring him here!’

Toby picked up the child beneath the wheeling mass of birds and darted into the porch. Orla took Toby’s hand and felt the calloused warmth of it; she was glad to be with him, relieved not to be on her own beneath the hurricane of dying birds. He jerked his hand from hers, scratching her palm with a rough thumbnail.

They stood together and watched the birds swarm. She imagined what this must look like from the air: the house, reduced, alone on the hill. The sweep of green lawn, patched with winter decay. The empty sky, lit by a fading sun. A swirling flock, moving apart and then coming together again, each blindly following the last towards death. And further out still, a tiny house on a narrow cliff, facing a vast sea, surrounded by birds as small as insects.

One final thump signalled the last of the birds; the thick glass had held, but was streaked with feathers. Toby left the porch and stared at the ground; Orla followed. Birds were everywhere, littering the gravel with their soft, broken bodies and smashed beaks, their claws that curled against the ground. Sam wept, silently, against her leg. Orla put her arm round his shoulders and pressed him to her. Bridie was finally quiet, the neck of her sleepsuit soaked with tears.

‘There must be close to a hundred – Jesus.’ Toby stepped back. Bones cracked under his boot. ‘Oh, God.’ He looked sick.

‘What happened? Why would they do this?’

‘I think the flock just follows, I think the ones at the front just flew straight in, you can hardly see the glass in this light, and I think the rest just followed.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Take the kids in, I’ll get a sack. I’ll burn them, back at the farm.’

‘Oh God. God, how awful. Thank you, Toby, I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s all right, it’s all right. I don’t mind. Nick can buy me a few beers.’ He laughed, and there was no heart in it.

‘I’m so sorry –’

‘Don’t, Mrs McGrath, it’s fine. You get them inside, now.’

Orla thought of the bird in the attic, fooled by the windows, fooled by the house. That bird had met its end because it thought it was coming to a place of rest but instead it suffered and died because it couldn’t see what was real.

And the birds outside, confused and stupid and eager. None of it made sense, none of it was natural – even out here in the countryside, where little deaths happened in a thousand small ways hundreds of times a day. It was the wrong time of year for swifts, still much too cold, and their approach upon The Reeve had felt panicked and inevitable, as though they’d been pulled in, helpless, by unseen hands.

From the sitting room, Orla watched Toby, in a pair of heavy gloves, pick each dead and dying bird from the gravel. Occasionally, he used two hands to snap tender necks.

I want to leave.

But how to put that to Nick? Nick, who had worked so hard for this house, who had gifted them all this life?

Children lost themselves.

A heaving, unacceptable thought. Death in her house – death that she and Nick had purchased and painted over and, eventually, dug up. At the back of her mind, a picture began to form. Vague, for now, just outlines and wild spaces. She didn’t want to examine it, wouldn’t look at it. Unbidden, her subconscious began to weave a story from all the threads she had picked up with her fingers but refused to knit together.

Orla waited for Nick to come home. In the shadowed living room, she pushed her knees up under her chin on the sofa and listened to the sea through the windows, away down over the cliff edge.

When he finally came through the front door, a mess of bags and suit jackets and old Thermos cups collected from the car, Orla came out to meet him.

‘Hi, sweetheart. Kids in bed?’ He sat on the bottom stair and prised off his shoes.

‘Yes, ages ago. You’re late.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He handed her his keys and tie.

In the kitchen, she retrieved a bowl of salad from the fridge and handed him a fork and a beer. ‘I’m glad you’re home. I don’t much like being here on my own.’

‘What?’ Nick was tired, only half-listening.

Orla hesitated. ‘I’m not sure about this. About the house, about being here.’

‘What? Where’s this coming from?’

‘I’ve been feeling it for a while – since Christmas, really. This house, it’s too much for me.’

‘Too much?’

‘Too big. Or – not that. It’s not the space, I don’t think. It’s the feeling. I just don’t feel quite right here. And I keep finding all that shite.’ He knew about the shoe, but was largely unmoved when she’d shown him.

‘Orla, it’s a really old house. There’s bound to be all sorts of stuff knocking around, hidden away. You know that.’

‘I don’t feel right here. Don’t you feel it, too?’

‘No,’ said Nick, and touched his fingers to his mouth. He paused for a moment and said, again, ‘No. I like it here.’

‘Do you? Actually? Because it seems like you go to fair lengths to stay away.’

Nick put his fork down on the table and looked at her; she avoided his eyes and stared out towards the dark garden. ‘Look, I get it. It is big, and it’s old. I’m sure you hear things, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. You should be used to it, right? You grew up in an old house.’ He leaned back in his chair.

Her home in Ireland – her parents’ leaden house – was an ancient farmhouse with stone walls two feet thick and windows that shivered in their frames and decor that had barely changed since it was built. But that house was heavy and plodding and unchanging. The Reeve was different; it was like an infection in the blood – hot and quick and hidden, and it took you by surprise every moment. It was just like Nick, she thought, to decide that every house built before 1970 would feel exactly the same inside. He never did have any imagination for things he’d never directly experienced, and who was he to preach to her now, from the safety of a childhood spent in a 1960s cube with gas heating?

He tipped the chair forwards and it rocked against the tiles. ‘We chose this house, Orla.’

‘Not really. You know I didn’t. I want to talk about moving.’

Nick sighed. ‘There’d be a penalty to pay on the mortgage; it’s too soon. We can’t afford it, Orla, honestly. We’d lose a lot.’ He swallowed another mouthful and said, ‘Are you really that unhappy here? Is it really that bad?’

He expected her to adjust in return for this idyll that he’d gifted her. Imagine – having to learn to love Paradise. Nick said he adored the house and the wildness of the garden and the stinging air. But he didn’t have to be here all the time and he could choose to leave – that was the difference.

Nick finished his supper – they sat together in fraught silence – and when he left the table to take a shower upstairs, Orla poured another glass of wine and dialled Helen’s number.

‘Orla?’

‘Helen! Hi!’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right. I just wanted – I wanted to see if you’d found anything. About the house, you know.’

The sound of paper rustling. ‘Actually, I have. It was just a quick scan, really, of the records we have access to. Land Registry, a few things from the county council archive, the usual.’

Orla closed her eyes. ‘And?’

‘It’s been sold a lot, but nothing really unusual there. A few deaths. Was that the kind of thing you were after?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Maybe.’

‘Orla, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. You know that, don’t you? In a house that old?’ Helen’s voice was gentle.

‘Tell me, Helen.’

‘Nothing horrific, if that’s what you’re worrying about. No unsolved murders.’ Helen laughed. ‘When the house was being built, a labourer’s son was caught under a beam that fell. Took both legs clean off, he died of an infection. He was only twelve. Very sad, but I imagine that kind of thing was pretty common back then.’

Orla heard pages turning.

‘The next one was at the turn of the century – a little girl. A drowning accident, in the pond. I think you said it’s not there now? So, nothing to worry about on that front.’

‘I know about that one. About the little girl, I mean.’

Helen said, ‘Right, okay. Here we go. Next death was back in the seventies – a male child.’

‘A child? Another child?’ A long pause. ‘Helen?’

‘Sorry, just finding the right page. Yes, a child. But then another death, too, same time. An adult woman. Drowned – accidental, according to the cert. They moved away not long after.’

‘Shouldn’t they have told us this when we bought the house?’

‘Not really, Orla. It was a long time ago. And it’s not like it was a murder or anything, just normal life. Sad, but normal. Did you really think, in a house that old, that there wouldn’t be a few of these?’

‘I never really thought about it. You know, until. Until it was happening.’

‘That’s all I could find, really. There’s been nothing since. People don’t stay for long, it looks like, and the previous owners were adults, no children. They moved out when the husband went into a home. But that’s all, Orla. It’s what you already knew. And it doesn’t seem like an unusual history, honestly.’

Orla put a hand over her eyes; the phone against her cheek was wet with tears. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Don’t cry, Orla, please. Have you spoken to Nick?’

‘No. God, no. Not about this. He’d think I’d lost it.’

‘I really do think it’s fine. There’s nothing out of the ordinary that I can find in any of the searches. Maybe you just need a break? Are you all right, Orla?’

‘Fine. Fine.’ She thought to herself, You’re a liar, Orla McGrath.

She considered their old house in Bristol, and those last few weeks before they’d arrived. They seemed like different people to her, now. A different family, utterly unconnected to their present selves. Nick had decided that they would all be happy here, but she hadn’t been unhappy in Bristol. Neither had he, she thought. He’d never stopped to ask, and she’d resolved a long time ago not to let that little detail fester, but here it was again, a splinter of resentment trapped beneath calloused skin.

Orla wished she hadn’t spoken to Helen, she wished she’d never brought it up. Those nights spent wanting to know more, thinking that it would help her understand – how foolish it seemed now. So easy for Helen to dismiss, but impossible for Orla to forget. All of it coalesced into a rancid fear: the nasty little objects that kept turning up, the awful incident at Christmas.

And so the joy she had always felt in solitude, in the spacious luxury of being alone with her own mind, was lost in the thin current of anxiety that seemed to run through everything she did. A black crevasse of unease that opened up a little more with each day that passed.