In Father’s Room

The house on Gorton Street had been one of several whose streets led down to the docks in times gone by, labourers’ houses whose doors and windows were flush with the walls so that the buildings looked like great rectangular blocks, with no adornments. The house appeared in black-and-white films, from the days when an MP’s wife warned that we shouldn’t give the working-class coal because they’ll just store it in their bathtubs. Children would play with sticks and hoops and dollies made from socks while women with scarves around their heads called them in, hauled laundry, and brought home sausages for supper.
   
By the 1950s the street had upscaled somewhat and now housed lower-middle-class families, their patriarchs lock-makers and electricians and the like. The house was then home to the Wiltons, mother Doris, father Fred, daughters Eliza, Bethany, and Grace. It was painted pink and had baby-blue windowsills with boxes of seasonal flowers, an aesthetic that implied that Fred was the servant of his wife in all domestic matters, and probably a “henpecked little pansy”, to quote a popular epithet in that part of England at the time.  
   
Anyone who knew Fred, however, knew better. He was amenable to the little freedoms that could make a housewife feel more independent than she was, but he had his rules, and his ways of communicating that breaching them would not be wise. The most important rule pertained to “father’s room”, a spare bedroom that he’d turned into his getaway, a sort of indoor shed lined with racks of tools and a workman’s bench below a single narrow window that allowed a little light.  
   
When each of his girls came of age they were invited up to father’s room for reasons that were slightly elusive but pertained to their coming of age. Doris supposed that, having noticed their budding into womanhood, Fred felt the need to teach them a few things about life, warn them off boys who might say pretty words but have ugly intent. ‘He’s good with girls’ she once said while ironing his blue boiler suit and chatting to the neighbour. ‘I wish I could have given him a son, but as it is we couldn’t have asked for better.’  
   
And if she sometimes noticed that items of her daughters’ underclothing were spotted with blood, she presumed that they hadn’t been taking care of themselves as they should, and resolved to scold them. ‘I mean really, Grace, you think any lad wants a girl who can’t even keep her knickers clean?’ Grace had simply stared, uncomprehending. She’ll grow out of it, thought Doris. After all, her older sisters did.  
   
Doris Wilton remained an overall contented woman, even as the ‘60s brought heartbreak. First, there was Fred in ‘64, dead in his private room. His doctor had suspected cancer of the lung when he’d come in with coughing fits, then one day when everyone else was out it seemed as though he just stopped being able to take in oxygen. He’d only been found the next morning when Doris woke up alone and went down the passage to his room to see if he wanted breakfast brought up. The door was slightly ajar and, tentatively nudging it, she saw him outspread on the floor.  
   
The next calamity was Grace, not her death but her life, becoming what her mother once called “wanton” in a fit of exasperation, unable to apply to her daughter the more modern and harder terms that she could have used. It wasn’t just piled hair and mini skirts and fights in cafes with other girls. She could have lived with that, might even have been proud of it, something to tell the grandkids. ‘Your mummy was a wild one, you know…’  
   
Instead, in her late teenage years, her behaviour took on a darker and more self-destructive hue. The last straw was when she was barred from a nightclub for performing a “deviant act” in the gentlemen’s washroom and was brought home by police. When they left Doris had started screaming at Grace, with Bethany and her husband Richard close by for moral support. When Grace failed to respond even after Doris had slapped a coffee mug out of her hands, Doris cried out in despair, ‘I’m only glad your father’s not around to see what you’ve become!’  
   
It was then that Grace went at her with the carving knife.    
   
Left idly by a lamb joint that Doris had served for dinner, it came within an inch of being plunged through her housecoat, but Richard just intercepted her and wrestled Grace away as she screamed with a lunatic’s strength. Doris sunk against the wall in shock, not blinking, feeling as though she had been successfully stabbed. Clinging to Grace as if she were a wild animal struggling to escape the vet’s needle, Richard managed to slam one of her wrists against a doorframe so that the knife flew from her opened hand and was retrieved by Bethany.    
   
He then tried to restrain her while they figured out what to do, but she stomped on one of his feet with a heel and took advantage of his momentary lapse to elbow him hard in the groin. She locked eyes with Bethany. Bethany just looked at her, clearly not wanting to touch her sister, as if Grace was a mangy dog living always in a thick cloud of fleas. Grace turned and fled from the kitchen and into the night.  
   
Served with brandied tea and cakes, looked over by a doctor, and then guided gently through an interview with a police officer, Doris leaned back in her armchair and let her middle daughter hold her hand. ‘Oh, Bethany’ she said, ‘what would she have done with that knife if your Richard hadn’t wrestled it off her?’  
   
Bethany was sure of the answer to that but held her tongue. ‘Grace is sick’ she said. ‘We can see that now. It’s not her fault, of course, people just go wrong sometimes. Since we’re not pressing charges, why don’t I look into getting her some help?’  
   
This seemed to cheer Doris up. Her features pinkened a little from their previous deathly pallor. ‘When Grace was born I had a nurse - Scottish, I think she was, or was it Irish? - who called her a “Wednesday’s child”. Something about a caul and sensitivity to storms, but of the heart… You’re right, my dear, the poor girls’ sick is all.’  
   
Bethany smiled at her. Doris was a fundamentally incurious woman, whose mind ran along conventional tracks. It was, supposed Bethany, both a weakness and her greatest protection against life. Against realising things that might destroy her.  
   
Suddenly she heard a rattling of pipes from upstairs. Doris didn’t react, had closed her eyes and was probably drifting into sleep. Richard came in with a tea towel and a cup that he’d been drying. ‘I really should look at those pipes again, Beth. I know Eliza said she’s had a plumber round, but it don’t seem like it’s done much good.’  
   
Bethany looked at the ceiling, at the place above which was her father’s old room. She had a sudden vision of radiator parts arranged on his bench, and his voice behind her, saying, ‘Now keep your eyes on those, my girl…’  
   
Doris moved from what had become known as the Wilton house in ‘75, finally at her wits’ end about the pipes and feeling as though the house was really more suited to a family than an ageing widow whose chicks had flown the nest. She craved a cottage with roses-‘round-the-door, and found one near Bethany. By this time, Eliza was a childfree financial consultant in the city, a rare female in her field and what her mother termed - not entirely with approval - a “working woman”. (‘I hate it when she calls me that, Beth, it makes me sound like a prostitute.’)

Bethany and Richard had a son of their own and even Grace had come right in the end, though for a while it seemed as if her downward trajectory would end in the grave and a carapace of protective lies. (‘I had three daughters. The youngest one died of an illness…’) She served a stint in Broadmoor for burning down a house where she’d been squatting, alongside a schizophrenic woman with whom she’d developed a quasi-lesbian relationship. ‘They ain’t as bad as blokes’ she told Eliza with a shrug, on being asked what made her start going with women, ‘They don’t make you do things just for a bit of love.’  
   
Many years later she’d dine out on her stories of Broadmoor and was even interviewed for a television programme about the institution at that time. She met Jimmy Savile (back then its director), and on reading the part of her file about same-sex tendencies, he grinned through his cigar and said, ‘You needn’t worry, love. We’ll have you back on solids in no time.’ She also overheard the Yorkshire ripper bragging about his “Yorkie pud” and saw Rolf Harris on a visit, singing a George Formby song on the theme of “Who’s Under Her Balcony Now”. I might as well be back in father’s room, she thought, listening to sports announcements on his radio and trying not to cough while he filled the room with pipe smoke.  
   
Little of these adventures filtered through to Doris, whose understanding was just that her prodigal daughter had returned, having been led astray by a bad crowd and the mad exigencies of fate. ‘My Wednesday’s child’ she intoned while holding her close on the doorstep of her cottage. Over her shoulder, Grace made a face at Bethany and Bethany just smiled and rolled her eyes.  
   
Come 1983 vascular dementia had claimed Mrs Wilton’s ability to live alone, and she was installed in a nursing home. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to ask why she couldn’t live with Bethany, even though she had room. Eliza was barely at home and liked to travel abroad, while the council would hardly approve of Grace having guardianship of her in her flat. By unspoken agreement, it was decided that none of the three sisters owed their mother anything beyond finding her a nice home and visiting when most amenable.

There was also the problem that, as her mind started to go, Mrs Doris Wilton started to say things that were challenging to listen to. Things that Bethany didn’t care for her husband to hear, let alone her young son. ‘He never did it right, you know, my Frank…’  
   
‘Fred, mother. Your husband’s name was Fred. And what are you talking about?’  
   
‘It was like he couldn’t look me in the eyes. The only time we did it normally was when we had you girls.’  
   
Bethany stopped washing up but didn’t turn to look at her mother, who wasn’t looking at her but rather into the middle distance.  
   
‘I think that’s why it took me by surprise when that policeman came. He tried to be delicate but I knew what he meant. And all I could think was, where did Gracie learn that? Where did she learn to do it so unnatural…’  
   
It wasn’t long after that Doris was safely installed in Trellis Lodge, with a view of the sea and nurses paid to hear odd talk. Grace visited her once in the early ‘90s, not long before Doris died. The old woman was sat in a wing chair with hair braided down to her wasted thighs, girlish pilgrim shoes, and a long shirt featuring Madonna in profile. (Things that she would never have chosen for herself, in other words.)  
   
A dim light of recognition dawned in Doris’ eyes, and she breathed out ‘Wednesday…’ as if this was Grace’s name. She held out a hand and Grace took it wordlessly. ‘I was just thinking about Freddie’ she said, and then with a mischievous grin, ‘Fucking Freddie. Fuck machine.’  
   
Grace didn’t stir at this. ‘You liked Freddie, didn’t you?’ she said.  
   
‘Oh yes’ replied Doris, sounding like a girl of sixteen. ‘He was in the pipes, you know. Old fucking Freddie in the pipes.’ She burst out laughing, but then as the merriment died away her expression started to darken and became self-pitying. Grace continued to hold her hand. A single tear trickled down Doris’ cheek and she gently shook her head. ‘But he never liked me, I don’t think.’  
   
Grace gripped her hand all the harder, leaned forward so that their faces were almost touching, and whispered, ‘That’s because he thought you were ugly. And dull. And who’d want to fuck a dull, ugly bitch? That’s why he never invited YOU to his room.’  
   
Across the living room, two nurses were chatting, and one remarked on the scene before them. ‘Nice of her to visit. Old Mrs Wilton’s been lonely lately.’  
   
***  
   
After Doris passed away Grace returned to the house on Gorton Street. It was on the market again, having been home for the past seven years to a family with two young daughters. The girls were twins and had a psychodynamic bond that excluded all others. Grace read about their case in the newspaper archives. Their mother was convinced that the house was haunted by some malevolent spirit tormenting the girls, and there was a storage room that no one would use and that eventually was sealed with a big iron lock.  
   
Grace furrowed her brow at this, sitting in the public library about midday. She was a representative of a charity for traumatised girls, providing legal representation to those who couldn’t read or had mental challenges. Her trip back to her hometown was undertaken during annual leave and she told no one about it. Initially, she just wanted to stand in the street outside and look at the house, like some sort of madwoman. A ritual of letting go, perhaps, both of her parents now dead and her wilderness years behind her. Perhaps resting her eyes on that cheap council house’s unpretentious frontage would finally close the book.    
   
But on seeing a “to let” sign in the window she went to the local library to check the paper’s ads, and that’s where it started. ‘Oooo’ said the girl behind the counter, wide-eyed, ‘you don’t mean that house? The one where they had all that trouble…’  
   
Soon enough she’d read the ghost story, moving from the broadsheet accounts to a journal of psychic research. Rattling pipes in the night, the older twin swearing that someone was lifting her sheets and interfering with her. The younger was found unconscious in the storage room, having wet herself and with one sleeve ripped from her pyjama top. The mother had asked for the boiler to be seen to several times and even bought this service twice, with what little money she had.    
   
Her girls had reached pubescence and on consulting a doctor she was assured that their anomalous behaviour was due to their bond as twins being threatened by maturity. All manner of psychological theories were explained to her, and they made sense up to a point. But why did Rebecca wake up screaming, why did she use in her sleep words that would offend a libertine? Why was Julie suddenly averse to workmen, at one time fleeing in fear from one in a blue boiler suit?  
   
The family were gone now. The mother rekindled her relationship with her estranged husband and moved back in with him, despite reports that he was alcoholic and violent. Grace closed her eyes and found herself caught between anger and sadness. She looked up the lettings in the local paper.  
   
The next week she had what she needed and attended her appointment with the lettings agent.  
   
‘You look like you’re ready to move in!’ said the agent hopefully, noting Grace’s backpack and giant handbag. ‘Not quite’ she replied, ‘but I would like some time to myself, to get my bearings. I hope that’s okay. I really like this neighbourhood, I grew up here, and I’ll probably end up buying if someone doesn’t beat me to it.’

The poor girl’s ears are ringing like cash registers, thought Grace. She knew that her speech would net her anything she liked in terms of “time alone”. The “grotty old council house that’s haunted by a ghost that likes to interfere with little girls” was hardly a closer’s dream, and to have it off the books…  
   
By this time they were in the living room. The agent almost tore the key from its ring and then handed it to her. ‘Please’ she said, ‘Take all the time you need. We’ve got a spare key at the office. Just come by before six to drop that one off. And don’t worry about the neighbours. I think Dave already said that they’re out at this time? One’s a working mum and the other a drag queen who works days on the docks, I’ve heard!’ She caught herself and seemed to regret those last words. What if this buyer was weird about that sort of thing? Grace, however, just laughed and confirmed that Dave had made their absence clear to her.  
   
And then she was alone. She went up to the storage room, father’s room, and walked in uninvited. That should have earned me a spanking, she said and dumped her items on the floor. The room was empty now. No sign of the workbench, the radio, the portable stove, the card table, the tool rack on the wall, the cabinet of smoking pipes and rare tobaccos… It was surprising how much he crammed into this space, narrow and closet-like as it was.  
   
It’s surprising what he managed to get away with in here, she thought.  
   
From her rucksack, she took out an Ouija board and from her bag small parts from a radiator. ‘Look at those, my girl. Place your palms spread out flat on the bench and keep your eyes on those parts.’ She mumbled these old remembered lines to herself as she placed the parts in a semicircle crowning the board. Against a filter cap, she propped a black-and-white picture of Fred Wilton, sat with four other lads in workmen’s uniform, drinking ale from tankards.  
   
Lastly, she removed from her rucksack a camping stove and placed it diagonal to the rest of the arrangement. She lit it and started to speak. ‘Am I talking to the essence of Frederick James Wilton?’ she asked. The planchette skittered. It answered YES. The light through the one narrow window decreased as if a cloud was passing by. ‘Do you recognise me?’ Grace continued. The answer came: NO.  
   
‘A pity’ said Grace, ‘You did once.’  
   
She thought for a moment and asked, ‘Are you trapped in this house?’  
   
NO.  
   
Grace frowned. ‘Then why do you stay?’  
   
The planchette slowed its pace to spell its next reply: TOO MANY DUCKIES.  
   
That was a word she hadn’t heard in a long time. It was popular once, and used by her father to describe… pretty girls.  
   
Grace swallowed the acid-tasting bile that rose in her throat. ‘The house is empty now’ she said, and as the light continued to decline she lit the stove. ‘It’s just me and you. If you’re not trapped here, why don’t you leave?’  
   
The planchette remained motionless. Her legs growing stiff as they lay crossed on the hardwood floor, Grace Wilton tried another gambit. ‘What would induce you to leave?’  
   
The planchette danced with anger in its step. YOU’LL HAVE TO BURN ME OUT.  
   
‘You don’t think I can?’  
   
NO.  
   
Grace sighed. Here endeth the lesson, she thought, recalling an expression from her Sunday school days. She took from the rucksack a large ziplock bag of potpourri and a bottle of lighter fluid.

The pipes started rattling. Thrashing. Sounding as if they were trying to rip themselves free of the walls. Grace poured the potpourri onto the stove and watched as it became a bonfire. A pipe snapped loose somewhere and started hissing, bellowing jets of steam. She thought about when she’d burned down that house with her lesbian lover, long ago. Perhaps she was just as mad now as she was back then.  
   
Downstairs the boiler shook like a gigantic steel pin, or like a missile preparing to launch. Maybe it would grow feet and storm up the stairs to drag her out of father’s room and give her a thorough beating. Not a chance, thought Grace and squeezed every drop from the can of lighter fluid onto the pungent flames. The last thing she heard before immolating was an old man somewhere in the distance, screaming.