Gnaw Read online

  GNAW

  TADE THOMPSON

  First published 2016 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-060-5

  Copyright © Tade Thompson 2016

  ‘Notes on Irongrove Lodge’ by Jonathan Oliver © Rebellion Publishing Ltd 2016

  Cover art by Oz Osborne

  The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  For Hunter, who gnaws

  NOTES ON IRONGROVE LODGE

  JONATHAN OLIVER

  I HAVE LOST everything but the desire to find Irongrove Lodge. I suppose my recent circumstances have given me renewed impetus to find the house, for I am now without a home. I am writing this in a hostel; they have let us in early tonight because it is so cold. This will be the worst winter in decades, they say. Many will die.

  I try to keep myself separate from the other residents, but still they insist on engaging me in conversation, indulging their own sense of the camaraderie of the streets. It’s ridiculous; many of these indigents would as soon stab me for a packet of cigarettes or a bottle as help me out.

  “I hear you’re interested in ghost stories,” one said, his drink-ruined face thrust disconcertingly close to mine.

  “I’m not sure where you heard that,” I told him, but he was not to be dissuaded.

  He told me that when he was a child, his bedroom was haunted. On the most silent, most starless nights, she would appear – the white lady. She would say nothing, merely stand before him, staring, pinning him to the bed with her terrible gaze, before climbing in beside him. He remembers that she was warm, not cold as ghosts are supposed to be. Even so, he was frozen with fear, and could do nothing as the white lady climbed atop him, the only thing separating her face from his a stained and stinking veil. Each time, he would pass out and when he came to, the ghost would be gone, though her smell would linger.

  Of course, I recognised the signs of the Night Hag straight away. A common enough complaint, especially in childhood – sleep paralysis. Even so, I allowed the man to finish his story, and he seemed happier for having done so, unburdened.

  I had set a precedent, because his was not the only ghost story. Most of the men who frequented the hostel had one to share. Once I objected – convinced that the ghosts were phantoms of the bottle or spirits summoned by chemicals – and the story-teller became irate; violence was threatened. And so I endured their tales.

  One man stopped part way through his story. To be honest, I hadn’t been listening, instead concentrating on my notes. I only realised that the story had come to a premature halt when a beery breath wafted into my face.

  “Does that say ‘Irongrove Lodge’?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Have you heard the name before?”

  “Tom used to mention it from time to time.”

  “Tom?”

  “He’s like us, only he refuses to sleep indoors now.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “Most nights he kips down by the Civic Centre. They keep moving him on, but he keeps coming back. Like he’s haunting the place.”

  I FOUND TOM on a bench overlooking the great grey edifice of the council offices. He was wrapped head-to-toe in a sleeping bag, and looked more like a massive grub than a man. I hadn’t come empty-handed; I made my offering, holding out a can as I sat beside him.

  “James at the hostel sent me.”

  I didn’t press him, instead happy to sit in silence while I waited for the alcohol to do its work.

  “He said you mentioned Irongrove Lodge, once or twice.”

  Tom belched and held out his hand. “You better give me another one of those.”

  I handed him a fresh can and opened one for myself; solidarity in super strength lager.

  It took a couple more drinks, but eventually Tom told his story.

  He had been on the streets for years, thought he knew all the highways and byways of the city, but one evening he found himself on a road he had never walked before. The houses were far too grand, far too well appointed for Tom to feel comfortable, and he was thinking of moving on when he spotted the blackened shell of a house. Once it must once have been as grand as its neighbours: at least five storeys high, sitting in extensive grounds. Fire had gutted it, and not at all recently to judge by the state of the ruins. The only thing that had been left untouched was a brass plaque fastened beside the empty, blackened doorway. The brass looked like it had been polished recently, and on it were the words Irongrove Lodge.

  For all that the neighbourhood felt inimical to one of his character, Tom decided that it would be here that he would sleep. He didn’t enter the house itself; the shell of the structure looked far too fragile and he didn’t want to fall through a rotted floor or be brained by a falling beam. Instead, he chose the garden. It was a warm night and the overgrown grass would hide him from the rest of the street.

  When he awoke it was mid-afternoon and the house had been restored. The garden was no longer a jungle, but instead an immaculately landscaped idyll, its flowerbeds a dazzling spray of colour and its trees heavy with fruit.

  Tom was half convinced that he had died, and that this was the afterlife he had been promised but never believed in.

  The door of Irongrove Lodge was open.

  “I stepped inside,” Tom began, before becoming overcome with emotion. I opened another can and handed it to him.

  “And is that why you now refuse to sleep indoors? Because of what you saw?”

  “No,” Tom said, and drew back the hood of his sleeping bag. His cheeks were wet with tears. “What I saw within Irongrove Lodge was... wonderful. But I knew that it could never, ever, be mine.”

  GNAW

  TADE THOMPSON

  1.

  HARRY AND TARA stand hand-in-hand, feet inches from the kerb, staring across the road to a lot. He squeezes her hand a little.

  “What am I looking at?” asks Tara.

  “Our house.”

  “What?”

  “You have to look at it with the eyes of your imagination,” says Harry.

  She exhales.

  The house, whatever it really looks like, is covered in ivy. Detached, five storeys high, though it looks like it has been terraced at one point in its life. Yes, Tara can see where it has been selectively demolished. The grounds are full of weeds, and a rusted lump suggests some kind of vehicle. The windows are all blasted out and the walls are red and blue with faded graffiti.

  This is not the end

  If we must go, so must others

  Urban defiance of the non-commodified variety. Tara can relate to the sentiment. Thin, reedy trees with tangled limbs gift-wrap the site. Where the roof has given way lumber pokes out like exposed ribs.

  She feels her husband tugging at her hand. Why is he so happy?

  “Come on,” he says. He drags her across the road.

  “I am not going in there without tetanus booster shots,” says Tara.

  FIVE WEEKS LATER, Harry is clad in a hardhat, inspecting progress while workmen frantically convert derelict into delightful. From her seat in the car, it looks to Tara like a bomb site, but she doesn’t mention this to Harry who has sp
ent weeks poring over plans and a scale model of what used to be called Irongrove Lodge. One time, with Harry bent over the model complaining about the portico, the architect catches Tara’s eye and they share a mental shrug over her husband’s mania.

  Her phone buzzes a reminder and she makes a three-point turn and leaves to get the children.

  ON MOVING IN day, Tara feels organised but not rested. She wakes up confused at 3 am, unable to get back to sleep. Cory is nestled against her on the left, Adrienne on the right. Harry is asleep on a chair, leg over one of the arms, head thrown back, too excited to lie down.

  Around them, boxes, plastic universal containers, lumps in the dark.

  She leaves the nest and makes tea, staring into the blackness of night through the kitchen window. Before long, it is morning and the moving vans are outside.

  LATER, SHE IS unwrapping dishes when she wonders where the children are. She walks through the house, starting at the ground floor, grateful that the front door is locked. Boxes strewn everywhere, Harry out at the old house, movers on the second or third trip with the detritus of their lives.

  “Adrienne? Cory?”

  She finds them on the third floor, locked in combat, wrestling each other, grunting, but otherwise silent, both pairs of eyes moist with tears.

  “All siblings fight,” says Harry when she tells him. He shrugs. “I used to fight my brother all the time.”

  Tara has no siblings, so she has no firsthand experience. Six-year-old Cory and seven-year-old Adrienne have been getting into it over the last year, but seem besotted with each other when not fighting. For example, they insist on sharing a room. They have had separate rooms since each was three because Harry says that’s when memories form, but every morning will find one in bed with the other.

  “STILL SMELLS OF fresh paint,” says Betty. She is the first visitor and the Pinot Grigio she brought is almost finished. “The smell of newness.”

  “I hate fresh paint, and I don’t like new houses,” says Tara. “No history, no soul.”

  “I thought you said it was old.”

  “It has old bits. There’s very little left of the old building.”

  Betty’s makeup looks oddly geometric. Tara knows from previous experience that her friend probably slept in her makeup and just touched it up before arriving. Betty is festooned with her weird New Age trinkets. Aquamarine crystals on a leather necklace, peacock feathers, copper and iron bangles, all adding up to a walking metal detector trigger.

  “Let’s go exploring,” Tara says. “I’m tired of unpacking boxes. Adrienne! Cory!”

  THEY END UP in a shopping centre. It looks like every other mall off a high street in London, a sameness that mildly irritates Tara. She could be anywhere, and is thus nowhere.

  They choose a café and Cory starts to draw in a book he brought along. Adrienne wanders around, leaving and returning in gradually increasing distances. Betty is talking about a guy she met, using absurd codes and Pig Latin for the naughty bits. Tara makes the right noises while making sure Adrienne has not been taken by a paedophile and giving encouragement to Cory, who appears to be writing an epistle.

  “Cory, sweetie, what are you writing?” Betty asks.

  Cory looks up at her and hands her the notebook. He says nothing, but he never does speak much. Tara sees a curious thing: Betty’s face change from mild curiosity to disquiet. Her eyes are slightly wider, her mouth straighter, lips thinner.

  She hands the book to Tara, wordless as Cory.

  I hate these places.

  Places of commerce and pre-packaged food. Places with a low hum of conversation, near-constant.

  Places of furtive stares and housewives and scantily clad girls showing off their new puberty and unrelenting transactions, of psychologically informed seat placement, of baby changes and espresso machines. It is an illusion of the village square because nobody knows anybody except the crew they came with. They are ensconced in their leak-proof headphones, and here’s the worst part: that eye contact, that promise-not-promise, that strange human thing that says I notice you and in this life or not there may be... something.

  Or nothing. It’s all so very Schrödinger’s Cat, that look. It’s a null yearn, a potential relationship, but not one at the same time. Because. Because you are or he is or she is. The reasons are all adjectives that follow the verb to be. Married. Shy. With someone. Gay. Religious. Restricted. Prejudiced. Prude. In a fucking hurry.

  Cory leaps up, grabs part of a cookie, and joins his sister without looking back.

  “Tara, what –”

  “I don’t know, maybe it was already in the book? Maybe Harry wrote it?” Except, Tara knows Harry didn’t write it. She recognises the handwriting as her son’s. It is in pencil. Every third “e” is facing the wrong way, and the wobble on the downstroke of the “y’s is pretty much all she has been trying to get Cory to perfect. And she isn’t even sure Harry knows what Schrödinger’s Cat is.

  She looks over and sees Adrienne ruffle Cory’s hair as she introduces him to complete strangers trying to enjoy their coffee. She looks back at what Cory has written and she feels a dead weight in her belly.

  CORY COMES INTO the world with calm mystery. He is two weeks early, and he is born without fuss. He does not squall, and his eyes are open. When Tara says, “Where is he?” he recognises her voice and stares at her. Her first act is to pinch him, so that he cries briefly, then falls asleep at the breast. Harry is not there – caught in traffic somewhere.

  Adrienne, who comes into the world with maximum sturm und drang, will not leave baby Cory’s side. Her first real word is “baby”. They are polar opposites, fused with a covalent bond, charges of an affinity that confuses their parents.

  Driving back home after dropping Betty off, Tara checks the rear view, and her children are holding hands. Adrienne is naming everything she sees out of the window. Cory is calm and expressionless. When he meets her gaze he smiles and his big green eyes light up. The weight in Tara’s belly lightens.

  THE FIRST TIME she makes love to Harry in the new house she does not come, although she pretends to. It seems to mean so much to Harry, but she is just tired. There is a half-full bottle of red on the bedside table. They swig it in turn, not wishing to find and unpack the glasses. Tara watches the fluid level move gently as Harry rocks above her. She sees his eyes tightly shut in the dim lamplight and she wonders who he imagines when he fucks her.

  One of their phones vibrates, and she uses this as a marker to determine how long the sex should last. When she tires of the charade she thrusts her pelvis like this and like that, then she stiffens her limbs and inhales. He reads this as her climax and is driven over the edge.

  He rolls off her, immediately takes a gulp of wine.

  “MAYBE HE READ it somewhere,” says Harry. “Did he read one of the novels or magazines? Maybe we misplaced a box in their room?”

  It stings that he is not offering an endearment. He used to always do that.

  “I don’t recognise the text. I’ve read all the novels in this house. It wasn’t from them. I’d know. The ones I haven’t read, we have not unpacked.”

  “Okay. Okay. But where’s the harm? He regurgitated a fragment of a passage that he probably doesn’t understand. Where’s the harm?”

  The weight returns to Tara’s belly.

  “There’s harm. You barely looked at it when I showed it to you. It’s malignant, written by some malcontent. Maybe borderline misogynistic.”

  “And what? You think it’s going to turn Cory into a woman-hating... whatever?”

  Tara imagines him with a cartoon question mark above his head. She turns away from him.

  HOUSEWARMING.

  A projector linked to the laptop projects blow-ups of images Harry took of the children in the house before renovation. They look Dickensian to Tara. Or faux-Dickensian, like a glossy magazine shoot. Adrienne is chewing a strand of hair and radiates a beauty that makes Tara’s eyes moisten. Cory has his back to the came
ra and is studying a mould formation. It cycles to Harry in a hard hat, both thumbs up, maniacal smile. This house means something to him. Adrienne talking to a workman, right leg curled around the left. Cory holding Tara’s hand while they walk in the grounds. Rubble.

  The gibberish of crowd conversations irritates Tara slightly, but she plays dutiful hostess.

  Yes, bought for a song. End-of-terrace, but the property on the other side was knocked down for some reason, so we have all this space. The garden’s a nightmare, but there is a man who takes care of it. Yes, the neighbours are quiet.

  Five storeys. There’s a cellar where we keep our mad relatives, ha ha ha ha.

  Why, thank you, dear.

  Tara leaves the party to check on the kids.

  “It’s a snake. Run away, Cory,” says Adrienne.

  “No, it’s not,” says Cory.

  When she comes across them Adrienne is cowering on her bed, shrinking against a wall. Cory is squatted on the floor, poking a serpentine object with a ruler.

  “What’s going on?” asks Tara.

  “Cory brought a dead snake in,” says Adrienne.

  “It’s not a snake. It’s a slow worm,” says Cory. “I saw it blink.”

  “Mummy, tell him it’s a snake,” says Adrienne.

  “I don’t care what it is. Get it out of the house,” says Tara. “And wash your hands.”