The Ice House Read online

  Martha tramped towards her little green trolley, hooked feet knifing through a slime of brown clay. The trolley was heaped with oddments. She liked to roam the meadows, collecting things, governed by no discernible organising principle: a sheep’s jawbone, a thumb-sized hunk of porous basalt, bog moss.

  She reached into the trolley bed, sifting through twigs, damp magazines, a tangle of old washing line. She retrieved something small and soil-clumped. It looked like a dead shrew.

  When Martha held it up, Delphine saw it was a tiny stuffed toy, no bigger than a fist – a grey bunny. All its fur had been rubbed away. One of its ears hung ragged.

  Where on earth had she found that? It must have been very dear to someone, once.

  Martha spoke three ratcheting upstrokes at the limits of Delphine’s hearing. She tossed the toy into the grave.

  Delphine looked down. The little rabbit lay beside Thompson in the mud, its head resting on his jowl.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘You finally caught one.’

  Slowly, she allowed her fingers to uncurl. Thompson’s lead slipped from her grasp.

  Delphine leant on her stick and finished her pipe. ‘Back to the old people’s home today.’ She tapped out the bowl. Black ash drifted down into the grave. ‘Ah, what a bloody mess.’ She slid the pipe into her coat pocket and let her hand hang by her side.

  Martha came and stood beside her. Together, they looked down at Thompson.

  ‘Yet still we go on,’ said Delphine. She exhaled. Strong, bristly fingers closed around her palm.

  Outside the care home, a great monkey puzzle tree rose from the black soil. The flat triangular spikes lining its trunk and branches were brown from the winter. In France, the name was désespoir des singes – ‘monkeys’ despair’.

  An old lady sat by the window in an ivy-green armchair, watching it.

  Delphine put her book down on the table by the door. She sat opposite the old lady, on the crisply made bed. Her chest felt tight and she took a moment to find her breath before speaking.

  ‘Hello, Alice.’

  Alice squinted at the jagged tree with a look of mistrust. She was hunched over, her flesh dry and scored like old firewood. She began turning her head very slowly, juddering with a clockwork tremor. They had known each other since Delphine was thirteen and Alice was seventeen. What a queer, pernicious magic age was. To transmogrify so profoundly, yet so invisibly. To swap out tiny granules of a person’s being while they slept, to grow a second body over their first until they peered out from within, swallowed whole.

  She eyed Delphine suspiciously. ‘Where’s my squash?’

  ‘On your tray, dear.’

  ‘Ah.’ Little hands, bulbous-veined, purpling at the knuckles. She clasped her orange plastic beaker. It rose, shuddering, to her lips. She sipped.

  The weak sun shone in the pinks of her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t be up here.’ Her words were halting, distant. ‘I’ll get in trouble.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I’m just having a little rest.’

  ‘And so you should. You work very hard.’

  Alice sipped from her beaker. ‘I do.’

  Delphine glanced at the white plastic radio alarm clock on the bedside table. Beside it was a Bible with a crocheted cover of powder-blue cotton, and a box of tissues, and an ammonite fossil set in a mosaic frame of razor clams and cockle shells. The room smelt of lemon disinfectant and witch hazel.

  Alice tutted.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ said Delphine.

  Alice nodded at the double-glazed window. ‘He shouldn’t be doing that.’

  Outside, a gardener walked amongst neatly clipped hedgerows and borders with his backpack of moulded green plastic, spraying poison. It did seem rather zealous for March.

  ‘They’ve probably had an infestation,’ said Delphine. ‘He’s just doing his job.’

  Alice shot Delphine a scornful look. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

  ‘I see. I’ll instruct the staff to have him shot.’

  A little puce wedge of tongue emerged and slid along Alice’s dry blue lips. ‘No. That’s too much.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s an admirer.’

  Alice broke into a smile. Tiny and hunched in her big green armchair, her neck jutting forwards, she looked rather like a tortoise.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You haven’t found rose petals on your windowsill? He might have come to whisk you away to the Riviera.’

  ‘No, not for me. I don’t think Reggie would like that.’

  Delphine glanced down at her hands. She still had grave dirt under her nails.

  ‘I saw . . .’ She paused to clear her throat. ‘I saw a kingfisher in the garden last week.’

  ‘John lets him borrow his boat. We take it out around the harbour.’

  Delphine’s chest tightened. ‘I see.’

  ‘He pulled his shirt off and went swimming. Then he came at me with a, uh . . .’ She formed her bands into a pair of beaks and flapped them open and shut. ‘A snappy one.’

  ‘A crocodile?’

  Alice’s mouth worked with silent laughter. ‘A crocodile? Whoever heard of a crocodile at the seaside?’ She gazed out the window, pursing her lips in scornful wonder. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  Delphine could still taste cognac on the back of her teeth. ‘All right. A crab.’

  Alice half-closed her eyes, beaming at the word. ‘Ah. I like crabs. I used to play at being a crab. When I was very small. Mum and Dad’d be shouting, and I’d be in the corner, a little crab. They can’t go backwards. Only sideways. Hmm. Reggie came at me with a crab once. I didn’t scream. He says he’ll teach the baby to swim, once it comes.’

  Delphine felt a cold tightness in her gut. Poor Alice. She didn’t remember.

  ‘That sounds nice, darling.’

  Alice lifted a finger to her mouth. ‘Shh. You mustn’t tell anyone yet. It’s a secret.’ She mumbled something inaudible, shaking her head. Then she chortled in her dry, gentle way, full of secret mirth. ‘Crabs have edges like a pie crust.’ She looked up at Delphine. ‘What are you still doing here?’

  ‘Watch your manners. I’m visiting you.’ Delphine fished a packet out of her satchel. ‘Now, would you like some chocolate buttons?’ Alice eyed the chocolates sceptically. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t because you always do. I’ll put some on a dish for you.’

  Delphine hauled herself upright and went to the bedside cabinet. She felt breathless, buffeted by all the non sequiturs. She took out a white china dish with a picture of a sailboat on it and put it on the tray table. She used a tissue to wipe off the dust. The dish jangled as she shook out some buttons.

  ‘There.’ Delphine lowered herself back onto the bed. She dug about in the packet for the last few buttons and popped one into her mouth.

  Alice peered at her. ‘I know you.’

  ‘I should hope so. I visit you every week.’

  ‘The builders keep switching things around.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re quite right. It’s most inconsiderate.’

  ‘You don’t know whether you’re coming or going.’

  ‘Next time I see them I shall give them a piece of my mind.’

  ‘Good.’ Alice nodded, apparently mollified. ‘I shall have to go back soon. My break’s almost over.’ She stirred her buttons with a fingertip. ‘Elevenses is in the smoking room.’

  ‘Alice, there is no smoking room.’

  ‘I know!’ She shook her head. ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’

  Delphine dipped her head and massaged her closed eyelids. Sometimes she wondered if dementia was infectious. The longer she spent with Alice, the more weary and confused Delphine became. She could feel her ageing brain cells expiring. With its ramps and neutral colours and identical rooms, the care home was a machine for forgetting. Really, a machine for being forgotten.

  ‘Alice. Are you in there, darling? Do you remember me at all? It’s me, Delphine.’
/>   Alice did not look up, but her expression brightened. ‘Ooh! I know a girl called Delphine.’

  ‘And what’s she like?’

  ‘Oh, very queer. I think because of her poor father.’

  Delphine sighed. ‘You might be right.’

  Alice did not seem to hear. She was shuffling buttons around the dish with intense concentration.

  ‘I shall have to go soon,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Alice.’

  ‘He’s going to come for me. After the sun goes down. Reggie and me are getting married. We haven’t any money but we’re going to go away. It’s a secret. Oh. I suppose I’ve spoilt it now.’ She blinked and tears dropped into the dish. Buttons slid towards the middle.

  Delphine got up and took a scented tissue from the box on the bedside table. She bunched it up like a rose, and dabbed at Alice’s cheeks. Alice closed her eyes. Delphine gently touched the tissue to either eyelid. She leaned in and kissed Alice through her sparse white hair, on her crown. Her hair was soft and smelt of apples.

  They sat for a while. Out in the corridor, somebody was shrieking for Tony. A pair of grey wagtails settled in the upper boughs of the monkey puzzle.

  Alice nibbled on a chocolate button. She pulled a face.

  ‘These are wet.’

  ‘Oh, never mind, dear. Here – have mine.’

  Delphine held out the rest of the packet. Alice closed a blotchy purple hand around it and snatched it back to her tray table. She ate quickly, getting chocolate on her chin.

  ‘I’ll have to go soon,’ Alice said.

  ‘Me too. We’re the last ones left.’

  Alice tutted again. ‘So they’ve left us to tidy up.’

  Delphine had to cover her eyes to stop herself from crying. She felt odd and adrift. She took a couple of slow breaths, straightened her spine.

  ‘You’ve done quite enough tidying up for other people. You relax.’

  Alice nodded, her mouth full of buttons. Delphine smoothed her trousers, readying herself to stand. A pressure settled on her heart.

  ‘It’s been good to see you, Alice.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Alice said into her squash.

  Delphine rocked forward, and with a splintering pain in her elbows, hoisted herself upright. She massaged her wrist.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Alice did not respond. She was like a fortune-teller machine after your penny runs out. When she reached the door, Delphine noticed an old hardback sitting on the dresser. It was Volume VI of Gibbon’s The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, picking it up. She turned to Alice. ‘Reading Gibbon’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice, vacantly. ‘I suppose we are.’

  ‘She doesn’t remember she has cancer.’

  The drapes were drawn, the air thick with dust. Martha was perched on her cushion in front of the hearth, knitting. She had lit the fire and the front room wavered in its dim, faintly aqueous glow.

  ‘She doesn’t remember anything.’ Delphine glanced across. ‘Martha, are you listening to me?’

  Martha finished the row she was on. She set down her yarn. She extended a fist and bopped it once for ‘yes’.

  Delphine blew on her coffee. ‘I wish they’d do more with her in there. She’s alone most of the day. No wonder she’s going batty.’

  Martha took a couple of maple candies from a dish and dropped them into her coffee one at a time, stirring with a teaspoon. The table was heaped with books – tattered hardbacks with torn, faded jackets and dog-eared self-published paperbacks on geology, geomancy, folk legends, cave systems and cryptozoology, swollen with damp, each spewing crumpled strips of paper bookmarking passages Delphine must have thought were relevant to her research at some point. The covers were coated in a heavy patina of dust.

  The books sat there like a reproach. She looked at them and felt sick. Were there others out there like her, who knew about the existence of a world besides our own? She had searched for so long, found so little.

  What if there was no one but crackpots? What if she had run out of time?

  She took a sip of coffee and clenched her jaw, blotting the thought out. Mustn’t dwell. Lock it away. Onwards.

  ‘Did you see the fence? It looks like someone’s torn it up.’ She pressed her tongue against the backs of her incisors. She felt a bit odd – residual brain fog from visiting Alice. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’

  Martha made her fingers into the shape of a beak and snapped it closed for ‘no’.

  ‘Right. Well. Very mysterious. Perhaps it was our friends from Cottingley.’

  Martha picked up her knitting. The plastic needles clacked softly. Delphine closed her eyes and listened to their gentle, percussive music – tak tak tak.

  No. She wouldn’t doze through yet another afternoon. She had work to do. She rose with a grunt and marched down the corridor to the War Room.

  She drew a key from a retractable lanyard on her belt and unlocked the door. A naked bulb lit a snowstorm of dust. Freestanding galvanised metal shelves took up three of the walls; against the fourth were a computer desk, a PC and a large dry-wipe whiteboard, covered in red and blue smears. Scanned and photocopied images were Blu Tacked round the board’s perimeter: passages from library books; a photograph of ancient Syrian pottery depicting horned figures surrounding a pool; a newspaper article in Spanish from 1956, with a loose translation biroed into the margins about sightings of humanoid bat-creatures near a village; and sundry other scraps, hints and half-clues of another world, gathered over decades. Arrows on the whiteboard linked bits of evidence to web addresses and categories like UNVERIFIED and EUROPE.

  In the bottom-left corner, held in a clear plastic sleeve, was a folded piece of paper covered in intricate writing and tiny diagrams: the notes of a man called Edmund Kung, who had drowned trying to reach the other world.

  Around the rest of the room, shelves were crammed and top-heavy with coils of fence wire, a two-ring camping stove, a skeleton gun, a Mamod steam engine, a ribbed plastic bottle of methylated spirits, a silver-plated cigar guillotine with the legend Tout Jour Prest engraved across its stainless steel blade, a Crawford’s shortbread tin stuffed with stiff chamois leathers and oily J-cloths, three colours of shoe polish (black, maroon and tan), grub screws in an old marmalade jar, a pair of hiking boots, a flare gun, a partially dismantled clay pigeon thrower and a small folding knife with a scrimshaw handle featuring a rather crude rendition of a giant squid assaulting a galleon.

  Delphine lowered herself into the leather swivel chair. She opened a drawer and took out her pipe. She loaded it, struck two matches and puffed until smoke billowed out of her cupped palms. In the open drawer was a small, grey-brown hardback with a hole punched through its cover – A. Prentice’s Transportation And Its Practice.

  It was the only copy she knew of – the only printed text she had ever encountered that openly acknowledged the existence of thresholds, and the channel, and the black fluid called godstuff that connected worlds. She could conjure the image of it just by closing her eyes, even now. The churning pool. The hot stink of peat, hops, bitumen. She had doubted so many of her memories in the decades since. Never that one.

  Much of the information in the book was skewed by prejudice or superstition – the author called the non-human sentient species ‘lower creatures’, and had an obsession with phases of the moon and cleansing one’s spirit through fasting and prayer – but there were also lucid accounts of the author’s journeys between worlds, including frank descriptions of the changes his body underwent, through which he tried to calculate precisely how many years younger the trip had made him.

  She nudged the drawer shut and switched on the computer. She was remembering why she hated coming in here. Some of her notes on the whiteboard were years old. Probably permanent by now. There were copies of letters written by Algernon, each closing with one of his trademark elaborate, faux-fawning valedictions – I remain, Sir, your humble servant in Christ, etc. The
place was a shrine to folly.

  She swigged brandy from her hipflask. She had always held back from publicly sharing what she knew, partly to protect Martha, partly so she could distinguish those with genuine knowledge from cranks. What if other people were doing the same? What if there was someone else out there like her, waiting for a signal?

  In the beginning, after the business at Alderberen Hall, after Father disappeared or died, she and Mother and Algernon and the lanta had all lived together. There had been twelve lanta in all: Abel, Esther, Ezra, Gabriel, Immanuel, Isaiah, Joel, Martha, Matthew, Naomi, Thomas and Timothy. People assumed Mother and Algernon were living in sin, which was easier to accept than the truth.

  Delphine remembered the row the night Algernon told her that he and the lanta intended to look for a threshold in Venezuela. How he had broken the news that she could not go with them. She was too young. It was too dangerous. She remembered how furious she had been with him. For leaving them. For tearing their family apart. Most of all, she remembered her inability to tell him that she could not bear for him to go, could not bear to lose another father – and how it had only made her angrier.

  In the end, it was Martha who had announced she would stay. Delphine had never understood why – at the time, the two of them were not especially close – but for that act of loyalty, she would be forever grateful.

  But Algernon was gone. Mother was gone. The lanta were gone. And now Thompson was gone. If death wanted you, escape was impossible. And death wanted everyone.

  She and Martha were the only ones left. What would Martha do when Delphine died?

  Why, after all these years, was she still holding back? She filled herself another pipe and fetched more brandy from the cupboard. What did she honestly have to lose that time wouldn’t snatch anyway?

  Delphine opened her email client and clicked New. She wrote:

  vesperi

  avalonia

  the honours

  If any of these terms mean anything to you, please contact me immediately. Replies will be received in the utmost confidence. If not, I apologise for the somewhat abrupt and cryptic tone of this email and wish you a fulfilling and productive week.