The Pagan House

Creek, which announced itself to be the smallest city in New York State, welcomed careful drivers no less than Onyataka. It was met by Edgar through half-closed eyes. This was not how he had intended to arrive, sleepily unalert; he forced himself to notice things—a restaurant, a factory, a pizza parlour, a gas station, an office-supplies store, white wooden houses whose front gardens, or yards, he supposed, were open to the pavement where bicycles lay down—

‘There’s a farmer’s market out back there on Thursdays,’ said Warren.

‘That’s good,’ said Mon.

—a video store was neighbour to a doctor’s office and a bookshop, none of which looked open; an impeccably healthy gang of teenagers in jeans and grey sweatshirts lounged in a corner of a baseball field.

‘You’ll like it here, Eddie. There’s lots of life. Kids and trees and parks and so forth. Do you play soccer?’

‘Not really.’

‘Of course he does,’ Mon said. ‘God, it’s so long since I’ve been here and the place hasn’t changed a bit. Time just stands still, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the Company headquarters? That’s where your grandfather worked.’

They passed an ornate, low-slung stone building topped by turrets, which looked as if the architect hadn’t been able to decide whether to build a castle or a bungalow so had invented some unworkable compromise between the two.

‘Did my dad work there as well?’

Mon didn’t say anything. She scoffed silently, as she usually did when her ex-husband was mentioned in the same sentence as money or work.

‘I don’t know, Eddie. He might have had a holiday job there when he was young. Most everybody here has worked for the company at some time. It’s a company town.’

‘Company town,’ Mon repeated, in a sort of wistful voice, and Edgar could tell she had been smitten with the same sour nostalgia or sentimentality that connected to those moments in London when she stayed up late looking at old photographs, playing records and drinking bourbon.

‘It’s got a very interesting history, the company. Creek was where the workers lived, the managers lived in Vail. It all grew out of the Onyataka Association. Nineteenth century. But you must know all about it, Monica, through Mike, Perfectionism, free love, Utopia.’

‘Mike didn’t go in for history tours. And I don’t think Perfectionism would ever have been one of his interests.’

Warren laughed politely to indicate that he had noticed a joke had been made.

‘And here we are. Here’s the house now.’

‘I’ve always liked it. Look, Edward.’

Edgar looked. He too liked the house, very much. It could be drawn very simply, as two intersecting triangles with a horizontal line at the top for the roof. Blue-painted wood with white shutters and weird little carved heads whenever a pipe went into or popped out of the wall, weathervane and TV aerial and a chimney behind each of the gables, it accorded to his idea of what a house should look like. It was the house he had tried to draw when he was a young child. It was the house he furnished when they played their game.

Warren opened the screen door for them. The front door had been left hospitably ajar. They walked along the hallway, past a curving staircase, black and white photographs on green-papered walls, to the kitchen, where an old lady was in the unsteady process of rising from a chair.

‘Fay!’

His grandmother, whom Mon confused with a kiss on both her cheeks, was grandmotherly small and white-haired, in a blue print dress.

‘If I remember you, Monica, you’d like a cup of tea after your trip.’

Her voice was clear and youthful, her face a rivery marvel of lines, which shifted and twisted and showed new tributaries when Mon said how well Fay was looking. Her eyes were blue, like Edgar’s.

Edgar made up for the confusion his mother had wrought with a candid smile and an English gentleman’s firm handshake.

‘And Edward. You look so much like your father, you know. Would you like a chocolate milk, or are you too grown-up for that sort of thing?’

Delighted at being identified as looking like his father, Edgar replied that, yes, he would love a chocolate milk and, no, a straw would not be unwelcome, and after Warren had brought in their bags, he made the tea and poured Edgar a glass of chocolate milk, which Warren suggested and Edgar agreed was the perfect thing after long plane and car rides in the height of summer.

Fay took them on a tour of the house, which passed slowly, because she needed to sit and rest at least once in every room, and Edgar, unconsciously, until Mon pointed out what he was doing and made him too embarrassed to continue, would position himself behind his grandmother’s shoulder, like a servant or a guard.

Edgar had been given the sleeping porch whose ceiling and outer walls were made of glass. It jutted from the house at the back, looking over the rose garden.

‘We thought it might be fun for you to sleep here,’ Warren said.

‘Warren has moved out into Frank’s room.’

‘We’re so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.’

‘It wasn’t much of a move,’ Warren said.

‘He cleans up after himself. He’s very tidy,’ Fay said, and Mon looked meaningfully at Edgar to remind him of his house-guest responsibilities.

In the corridor, Fay sat on a chair after failing to make it quite to the picture window.

‘On a clear day you can see all the way to Onyataka Depot.’

‘Oh,’ said Mon.

‘Good,’ said Edgar.

‘You can see the Company building from the corner of the window. The Administration building, not the factory. That’s in Creek, of course. And across the way is the Mansion House. They have regular tours. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.’

‘I’m sure I would,’ said Edgar, politely unconvinced.

‘But tell me, what would you fancy doing in your time with us?’

The wording of the question intrigued Edgar in its imputation that he might operate in a world of fancy rather than necessity. It supposed an alternative Edgar, foppish, with a butterfly mind, who went where things took him, who carried a battered brown-leather suitcase covered with faded stickers of faraway countries and who might even own a unicycle that he had disciplined himself to ride. The real Edgar was driven by imperatives. Imperative number one was to further investigate his capacity the first chance he got. This was not a subject to share, except he was looking forward to a moment of companionship with his father when he might somehow imply his new state, maybe eating burgers at a lunch counter, men of the world together, two guys.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Edgar.

‘You only have to say. Supper will be in the kitchen. Warren has put out towels in your rooms. I’m so glad you’re here.’

Edgar, in the bathroom, splashing water on his hair and pulling it casually into spikes, listened to his mother and grandmother in the corridor.

‘Who is Warren?’ his mother asked. ‘How long has he been here?’

‘I don’t know where I’d be without him,’ said Fay.

When Edgar went downstairs—after lying on his bed and flirting with his capacity, which he abandoned and zipped away when he heard footsteps going past into Fay’s room next door; and after gazing out of the window and wondering what Onyataka Depot might be and whether he would be here long enough to make the acquaintance of the blonde girls strolling past, who looked so unapproachably healthy and complete; and after sneaking into his father’s old room to run a finger along the spines of the science-fiction paperbacks in the bookcase; and after looking into the Music Room to examine some of the record albums, the glowering 1970s faces—Mon and Fay and Warren were already in the kitchen. His mother was wearing a black T-shirt with red Asian script printed on it that Edgar hadn’t seen before. Her hair was hidden beneath the turban of a bath towel. A large ginger cat snored in a basket by the stove.

‘What do you think of the house?’ Warren asked.

‘It’s really nice,’ Edgar said, somewhat gruffly, because he preferred his voice to err towards brusque manliness rather than the shrill castrato it sometimes became.

‘You must be exhausted,’ said Warren. To which Mon was about to protest but stopped when she realized that he was talking to Fay, who performed her astonishing smile again.