House of Sticks by Peggy Frew

Author:Peggy Frew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2011-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

DOUG CAME AND WENT. SOME MORNINGS HE’D BE THERE, EDGING HIMSELF IN THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, FLAPPING AND STAMPING, CURSING THE COLD. Seating himself at the table, grinning round, drinking tea, eating porridge, talking relentlessly.

Bonnie couldn’t ignore him. Everything he said she heard with excruciating clarity, and she was racked with the effort it took not to respond.

‘Went to see me mate Vinnie yesterday,’ Doug might say, tipping his chair onto its back legs. ‘He’s bought a new car. Had a big win. Splashed out.’ Lowering the chair, placing his hands flat on the table, sticking his face forward and letting each word drop with theatrical importance. ‘B … M … W … nineteen … eighty … five … Seven … Series.’ Leaning back again, eyes half closed, a wise nod. ‘The classic — you know, the sports sedan — the cute one with the squared-off shape and the sunroof?’ Forward again, hands on table, voice lowered. ‘He wanted to get a Merc. Late seventies’ — back again, flapping a hand — ‘but I talked him round. If you’re going to spend that sort of dosh you might as well put in ten grand extra and go for real quality, you know …’

And Bonnie would get up and move around the kitchen because she couldn’t stand to be that close to him, to be stuck there as he jabbered and gesticulated and the twins hung on every word and Pete ate his breakfast as if behind some invisible barrier, untouchable, removed. Who the fuck are you to tell someone which expensive car to buy? she might shout in her head. Or just, Shut up, shut up, shut up!

And Pete would go out to the workshop, and Doug would hang around, performing for the twins who always provided such an infuriatingly willing audience, and she would peck around them like some sort of ineffectual chicken, trying to get the kids away, move them on to something else. Making comments such as, ‘Come on, guys. Let’s leave Doug alone now — he’s got work to do with Dad.’ And with what seemed at times to be simple blithe intractability, or at others a sort of indulgent tolerance — as if she really was a bird and if he wanted to he could just raise an arm and shoo her away — Doug would go on with his banter, his show.

Or he might not come, and they’d sit at breakfast with the spectre of his figure at the door. And at these times it was Bonnie who foisted on the others conversations they didn’t appear to have much interest in. ‘Looking forward to kinder today, Lou?’ she might say, and receive absolute silence in response. Or, ‘Be cold out there this morning’ to Pete, who’d maybe offer a ‘Hmm’. And she would feel her face get tense, hating the insistent blather of her own voice yet unable to stop it. In the pauses she’d sip her tea, and back her eyes would slide to the door, the waiting pane of glass.

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