House sitting

23Jun08

India kicks from beneath her feet a tangle of duvet and traces with her finger through the hot white ashes a featureless face.  It spans the width of the bedroom, from door to heater. Impressive. No eyes, no mouth, a gaping empty oval, very void of expression. She whispers void void void at the singed spider plant on the window sill. By naming a nothing one creates something, she thinks. Who told her that?

Trailing duvet, India sweeps around the face and into the hall. Where the rafters hang sooty black and sodden. In the kitchen molten plastic appliances, unidentifiable, melted into the cracks and crevices between tiles. She will say, when he returns, your cat ran away and your neighbours overfed the fish. Bernard Who Lives Behind The Wheelie Bin Shed stole and sparked chips of flint into the bundle of your unopened mail, and the meal I promised to have ready for when you got back, it went wrong. Sausages, they were, from the farmers’ market.

He will say, with disbelief, ‘went wrong’, the speech marks an audible and pointed addition . India will point out that the batteries of the fire alarm (now also melted beyond recognition, an electric mess of wires and white deformed plastic) should have been replaced half a year ago, and he will say, don’t change the subject. As an afterthought he might tell her fire alarm batteries have always been her responsibility. And throw something, if there is anything left to throw. India notes with satisfaction that the phone in its plastic grey holster is no longer phone shaped, impossible to peel away from the twisted carpet, or what once was.

India only regrets the kettle.

In the kitchen she mirror-writes her name into the filmy window panes, and in the linen cupboard, inhales the smoky warmth with its surviving undertones of fabric conditioner. The bathroom door no longer opens. It was here the burning started. Jetlagged as he will be, he will not think to ask why she cooked his sausages in the bathroom.

India returns to the face in the bedroom and sits in the centre where the nose would be, legs folded with a foot resting on each knee, and waits for his rattle of keys. Which she will only hear if he makes it past the smell curling lazily through the block, the glistening wet the fire engines left behind on the front lawn, the poorly repressed delighted hum emanating from the handful of curtain twitchers hovering on his porch, waiting, also, for his return.

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