The Stranger in Our Home. Sophie Draper
on the top floor. After Steph had gone, Elizabeth had stopped cooking a sit-down family meal. She’d eat on her own on a tray in the sitting room, leaving a meal for me to eat in my room. Now, with the snow, it was like someone had flipped a switch. For the first time she told me to cook for myself. I was old enough now, she’d said. All day, every day, and I didn’t speak to a single person, living off baked beans and cereal until the milk ran out, then it was cheese and biscuits and anything I could scrounge from the fridge. There was no radiator in my room and it was so cold that I wore fingerless gloves and a triple layer of jumpers, sitting under the blankets in my bed by the window, tracing the myriad star shapes of the frost flakes that grew on the inside of the glass.
It was then that I’d got frightened. What if the snow never melted? What if the snow queen flew down from the North Pole and breathed ice on the whole house, turning it into a giant iceberg marooned in a sea of white? What if the noisy geese that migrated in autumn returned early to break chattering and gobbling through the windows to steal all the rest of our food? What if I awoke to hear the wolves howling hungry in the distance and came down to find my stepmother frozen solid to the sofa, a human block of ice? How would I get out, how would I eat? Who would ever come looking for me?
But it wasn’t like that now. I wasn’t a frightened, over-imaginative child. And the house was mine, I could roam each room to my heart’s content, enjoy my solitude and the time to paint. Thanks to Craig I had a huge pile of winter fuel and could sit in front of a roasting fire, and I’d seen plenty of tins in the cupboards.
‘Caro?’ he said quizzically.
‘Yes,’ I said, coming back to reality. ‘Oh, I’ll be fine.’
‘I’m that way,’ he pointed north. ‘About five minutes on foot. You have any problems, you call me, okay?’
He pushed a business card into my hand. Atherton Woodcrafts and Log Supplies. There was a picture of a log fire, a kitchen and a web address.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘No problem,’ he replied.
I clutched the card in my fingers. He was smiling and the warmth of his expression made me feel ungracious. I knew I’d been rude before. All he’d done was honour a purchase Elizabeth had made before her death – what was wrong with me? I tried to think of something to say, something more friendly.
‘How’s your dog?’ I said.
‘Patsy? She’s at home, having a snooze. Well, bye then.’
He loped back to his jeep, turning towards me before climbing in.
‘And she’s not my dog,’ he said. ‘She was Elizabeth’s.’
Before I could respond, he’d got into his car. As he drove away, the swirling snow dropped like a curtain behind him.
Later that evening, I sat by the fire enjoying my new logs. The flames spat and crackled and I watched them dancing green and yellow as sparks disappeared into the chimney. The soot clinging to the stack glowed, colours flaring and fading like shooting stars in the night. As the heat began to build, I couldn’t help but feel encouraged. It was more than the heat, it was the sense of home a fire brought to a room, even here in this house, where I’d been so unhappy as a child. It wasn’t the house, I reasoned, it was the people who lived in it.
I felt Craig’s card in my pocket. I pulled it out. Atherton Woodcrafts and Log Supplies. I decided to look it up on my phone.
There was a picture of Craig, sleeves rolled up, presumably in his workshop. Beside him was an old-fashioned woodturning lathe. It looked a bit like a trestle table but with an upstand and wooden arms that held the piece being worked on. A large wheel led via a drum belt to a long pedal beneath. I could imagine it turning as the pedal thumped. For a moment it reminded me of the pear drum. On the wall behind were shelves laid out with a host of tools and a large lavender bush nudged up against the window.
‘Kitchens, furniture and joinery. Logs supplied by arrangement,’ said the strap line, ‘Specialist in hand-crafted oak.’
I almost envied him. I worked with paper and paint, pictures from my head. He worked with solid wood, creating tangible, functional objects. From the photo galleries that followed, some of the furniture looked very beautiful. I felt a softening in my attitude; he was someone who worked with his hands, who created things like I did. And he’d taken in my stepmother’s dog, how many neighbours would do that? I chewed the inside of my cheek. It hadn’t seemed to occur to him to offer to give it to me, but then what would I do with a dog? I’d never had any pets, had never wanted one. I wasn’t good with animals.
I realised then that I was avoiding the real tasks, faffing about with hall table drawers and distracting myself with speculation about the house and Elizabeth. This wasn’t a holiday, I had a job to do. In fact, two. I set the printer going, churning out a full copy of the commission text. Tomorrow, I would do some sorting in the house first, then later I’d paint. Painting had always been my reward.
When I was thirteen, the school took us to the art gallery in Derby. We were deemed old enough to explore the different floors of the gallery on our own without the teachers, as long as we stayed in groups of at least three or four. I hung around with a group of girls whilst the teachers were in sight, but once the staff had wandered off, the girls turned on me and shooed me away.
‘Can’t you find your own friends?’ said Kathy Taylor.
‘Why don’t you go to the prehistoric room on the first floor – you’ll be amongst your own kind there!’ Paula March and Susan Pritchard sniggered behind my back.
I was more than happy to abandon them. I climbed the stairs to the first floor, meandering through the galleries till I came to a room marked The Joseph Wright Gallery. Here the walls were painted a dramatic dark grey. Huge paintings in heavy gilt frames hung all around me and the lighting was dim to protect the artwork. I felt enclosed, as if I’d walked behind a curtain to a hidden space, a sequence of scenes in a theatre, each picture peopled with actors playing out a story. In one, a woman in eighteenth-century dress leaned over a man prostrate on the ground. She was partly turned away, one hand held up as if to ward off an assailant. In another, a seascape showed black cliffs towering to left and right, the centre lit up like a scene viewed through a telescope, the oppressive walls of rock giving way to pale silver water and a tiny boat, miniscule figures clinging to the deck.
On the furthest wall was the biggest painting, a blurring of russet browns and red. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the scene of a family gathered round a kitchen table, several adults of different ages and two girls. The elder held her sister as if to comfort her, the younger child’s head turned away in shock. The table was filled with scientific instruments, poles and jars and rubber tubes, their purpose unclear. The faces of the onlookers were lit from beneath and the candlelight flickered in their eyes, throwing shadows on their skin. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
I read the label. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. Now I understood. The bird was trapped in a bell jar and a wild man with long hair gesticulated to his audience. His other hand wound a handle on the box beneath the jar and the bird had its wings splayed and beak open as if it were gasping for air. No wonder the two sisters – I assumed they were sisters – looked so distressed. The scientist was demonstrating a vacuum. With each turn of the handle he was starving the bird of oxygen.
I stood mesmerised. Each detail was painstakingly accurate. But the story was told by the contrasting light. Colour, shade, light and dark playing out the drama. I wanted to reach out and touch the painting, to feel the brush strokes that had created such a work. My eyes darted from one face to another, reading their reactions, each character, each object, each shade of colour contributing their own notes, like a symphonic piece of music.
I knew then what I wanted to do. I was going to paint.