Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,164

wind caught the door and flung it wide, into the hall. The three of us stumbled inside, breathing hard, and then turned round to grapple with the door, shoving against it until we were finally able to close it with an enormous, resounding slam. We fell against it, panting and dripping, our backs resting on the wood. It was then that I saw a pale flickering light coming from the kitchen, and a moment later that I heard the heavy thuds, the sound of metal striking something hollow and dull. The noise reverberated through the house half a dozen times, followed by the sound of wood splitting, a bright and aching yawn.

“What the bloody hell …?” my father said, a dark shadow beside me. He pushed himself off and began walking down the hall. Mabel stayed behind, still panting, apparently winded, while I followed, pressing my palm against the cold, flat surface of the wall as I tried to guide myself through the darkness. As the banging continued, I felt it shudder through the wall and into my hand. It was as if the entire house were being beaten in a series of violent, body-crushing blows.

When my father reached the living-room doorway, I heard him knock into something, let out a little bark of pain, then stumble onward again. When I reached the obstacle he had encountered, I realized it was the living-room door, hanging half off its hinges, leaning into the hall. I let out a sharp gasp and continued on after my father. He halted a few seconds later outside the kitchen, and I joined him there to peer into the room.

It was the candle I noticed first, upright in a saucer in the middle of the table. Its flame flickering slightly, it gave out a pale illumination that made the room all soft-edged shadows and blocks of darkness against the shuddering light. Everything else was indistinct except my mother, her jaw clenched and her eyes gleaming buttons of conviction as she swung her sledgehammer up, grunted, and then smashed it against the kitchen wall.

“Jesus Christ almighty!” my father whispered, his words coming out like the slow hiss of a leaking tire. Then the hammer hit the wall with an enormous thump, and there was the sound of plaster tumbling in fragments; it made me think of teeth falling from a cartoon character’s mouth.

As we stood in the kitchen doorway I turned to look at my father, but all I could make out were the hollows of his eyes. Then he took a breath and stepped past me, into the kitchen. “Evelyn,” he said as she swung the hammer over her shoulder. “Evelyn,” he repeated, this time louder as he tripped on something. In the tangle of his feet I thought I made out the outline of a broken chair. “Stop!” he shouted as my mother, a flat silhouette, began to lift the hammer above her. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” His voice was loud, but pleading, like a child’s.

She turned to him. I saw her arms twitch slightly, as if she were about to swing the hammer at him. Then she let it go so that it dropped behind her and fell to the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I SPENT THAT NIGHT WITH MABEL AND MY FATHER AMONG THE BATTERED remains of the living room. None of us wanted to spend the night alone. I sat on our now legless armchair, my legs stretched out on the floor in front of me, while my father slept on the tilting settee and Mabel paced back and forth across the littered floor. When she wasn’t smoking, she gripped the diamond engagement ring on her finger, twisting it nervously round and round.

“Oh, God, Jesse, I can’t believe this is happening. It’s like one of them bleeming disaster films, is this. But I tell you, I can take canceling the wedding. I can even take our Evelyn acting like a one-woman demolition crew. But I’m worried to death about Frank and Ted being out in this.” She swept an arm toward the window and the cacophony of the still raging storm. “They could be off in a ditch somewhere. They could be injured. Oh, God, they could be …” She sobbed, then added softly, “I just wish we could phone the police.”

We had discovered that the telephone was dead when my father tried to ring my mother’s doctor, though what advice the doctor might have offered in the wake of her fit