“What tin?”
“This tin.”
I feel cold even now when I think of him opening it. His hands on the stiff, slightly rusty lid. Him pulling and peering and me just standing there. The tissue was discoloured, brittle.
“What have we here, Norbert?”
He drew out a Highlander, red jacket, green kilt, tam-o-shanter, a running man, heels kicking, thin bladed bayonet to the fore.
“Jeez,” said Niker, looking at the exquisitely painted criss-cross leg garters, “did you do this?”
“No, my dad.”
“It’s good.” And he put the soldier down, turned it gently this way and that, admired it. “Very good.”
He unwrapped and looked at every soldier in the same way, taking time and care, asking me what I knew about the uniforms.
Two hours later Mum found us both sitting at my desk, paint brushes in hand. The lasagna, which I’d forgotten to turn down, was burnt, but there were fifteen chestnut horses with black bridles, blue saddle-cloths and fifteen horse stands. Niker had painted mud and grass on his stands. And also flowers.
Mum’s smile was so broad. But premature. Nothing changed at school. In fact it remained so much the same I sometimes think that Niker never came to my house at all. But then I sometimes think that my father, with those heavy hands, could never have painted the Highlanders. And he did.
So here I am again, sitting at my desk with the smell of turps about me and thinking about Niker because it’s preferable to thinking about what I’m actually thinking about. Which is Chance House.
You know how it is when there’s something niggling you, and you do your best to refuse it, chain it up in some dark and faraway place, only to have it come yap yap yapping back at you like some demented dog? Well, yap yap yap, here it comes again. Chance House.
“You can go there. Walk. It’s not far.”
I’m really not painting. I’m just waving a brush about. So I might as well – yap yap – go downstairs and get Mum’s road atlas. This is how she finds me, crouching over England with a piece of string in my hands.
“Geography prep?” she asks, practical as ever.
“Yap.”
“What is it?”
“Distance in miles from here to St Albans. How far do you reckon, Mum?”
“You’re the one with the string.”
“Right. Fine. Ninety miles. Would it be ninety miles?”
“Sounds about right.”
“Could we go there?”
“Why?”
Good question.
“Day out?”
She sits down, kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up on a little pouffe.
“Bit far for a day out,” she says. My mum is a small person, with a small face and a little puff of blonde hair. She looks exhausted.
“Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“God bless you, Robert.”
It’s only teabag tea but, the way she takes it, it could be water in a desert.
“I’d really like to go to St Albans. In fact, I think I have to go to St Albans.”
She shuts her eyes.
“Do you think we could?”
“Mmm.” She’s asleep. I lift the teacup from her lap. Where her skirt has ridden up I can see blood throbbing in her varicose vein.
In the kitchen I make myself a sandwich and then I return to my desk.
“It’s really not far,” yaps Edith Sorrel.
That’s when I decide to set the dream alarm. It’s not an exact science but it sometimes works for me. All I have to do is think about whatever it is that’s bothering me and then set the alarm for 3am. I’ve tried many different times of night but all my best results have come from 3am. Too early in the night and my dreams don’t really seem to have got going, too near the morning and they seem to be petering out. At 3am, I’m normally in the middle of some seething epic. As soon as the alarm goes, I start scribbling. I write down everything I can remember in my dream diary. Even the stupid and inconsequential stuff. Mainly that actually. I note all the colours, the people, the buildings, the looks, the feelings. But I don’t try to make sense of anything. In any case there often isn’t much sense to be made. But in the morning it’s different. Once or twice I’ve woken with some completely crystalline idea about a problem. An idea which often bears no relation to whatever I scribbled down in the night, but it’s still there like some perfect jewel on my pillow. Of course, it’s not always like that. Much more often I have to go back to the diary, reading and re-reading until something jumps out at me – a word, a colour, a phrase, a clue. Something to work with. Naturally, I always hope for the jewel. But somehow I can’t see that happening with Chance House.
Once I’ve decided to use the dream alarm, the evening normally passes mournfully slowly. But not tonight. It only seems a moment before I’m in bed. Then it’s just a matter of going through the ritual. I lie on my back, close my eyes, and relax my body, starting with my feet. When all my limbs are so heavy that the mattress seems dented with them, I turn to my mind. This is when it can get tricky. I think about the problem – in this case Chance House – but I try not to direct my thoughts. It works better if I can keep everything loose and unfocused. If images come, and they do, I attempt to follow them, but not to pursue them, so they can choose their own way. It normally takes a while for the vague, meandering flow to begin. But Chance House conjures itself at once, arriving exact and massive in my imagination. It’s a huge edifice of dirty cream brick. Wide, concrete steps lead to a forbidding door. The door handle is a twisted ring of metal, fashioned like a rope. I imagine myself walking up the steps, grasping the handle in both hands and passing boldly into Edith’s past and my future. But that’s not what happens. I do walk up the steps. But the moment I touch the door, there is a flash and a bang and the house disappears. Or that’s what I believe at first. A little while later, as I stand in the dark, it occurs to me that maybe I have disappeared.
Next thing I’m aware of is Mum shaking me by the shoulders.
“Robert,” she says gently.
At once I’m in action mode, it can’t be more than three seconds before I’m bolt upright, pencil in hand.
“Room,” I write in my dream diary. “Small, cosy, warm, not unlike my bedroom.”
“Robert?”
“People: me, Mum. Atmosphere: everyday, normal. Colours: pale but bright, morning colours.”
Mum gets up and opens the curtains. It is bright. In fact, it is morning.
I grab for my clock, focus. Focus again.
“You set the alarm for three am,” says Mum. “You silly chump.” She smiles, touches me lightly on the head.
“What!”
“Lucky I noticed, eh?” says my mother.
I fall backwards on to the bed. She re-set the alarm. She re-set the alarm! I don’t believe it. I pull the duvet over my head.
“Come on now,” she says, “seven-thirty. Chop chop.”
She leaves.
I