Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [71]
After a couple of years of that house, Lillie decided it was time for Nell and Tig to move again. “You need bigger,” she told them, and she was right. She sold their house for a good price and shifted them farther north. The orange shag carpeting left over from the 1970s was only carpet, she said, when showing them the house. They shouldn’t look at the plate racks everywhere, those could go, and never mind the light fixtures. There were three fireplaces, a fireplace was not junk, and the walls were solid, the house had spacious that lots of peoples would kill for, and some of the woodwork was original, such details counted for a lot.
Nell and Tig were pleased: now they’d have a back garden, and a basement that was finished – well, half-finished, and the mouldy indoor-outdoor glued to the cement floor could come off – and windows all around: in the row house, the windows were confined to the front and the back. On the day the deal closed, Lillie gave them a blue and orange bowl full of her own cookies.
When Nell found she had a problem – an unusual problem, she felt – Lillie was the only person she could talk to about it. It was a problem with houses, but it was also a problem with human nature. It wasn’t a thing she could discuss with Tig – he got too anxious, and some of the human nature in question was his. But Lillie must have seen a lot of cellars and attics and human nature in her day. She must know that houses were powerful, that people could get stirred up about them, that they could bring out feelings you wouldn’t expect. Nothing Nell could tell her would shock or dismay her: she’d seen it all – surely – before. Or something like it. Or worse.
Nell asked Lillie over to tea. Tea was about the only thing in the form of eats and drinks that Lillie could be persuaded to share: she would never come to dinner. Nell served up some of Lillie’s severe cookies – they kept almost indefinitely – to show that she appreciated them; which she did, though not as cookies, exactly.
Nell and Lillie had their tea in Nell’s recently acquired kitchen. “Such a view,” said Lillie, gazing out over the back garden.
Nell agreed. For both of them it was a view of the future: there was nothing in the garden at present except some wispy grass, a corrugated tin shed, and a number of holes in the ground. The people before – they of the plate racks and shag carpets – had had a dog. But Nell planned great things – daffodils, anyway – when she could get around to it. One of her New Age friends who did feng shui and sageing had gone over the garden, and the house as well, with a view to orientation and psychic entities, and had pronounced the place benign, especially the garden, so Nell had no doubt that things could be made to flourish there.
“I thought maybe some daffodils,” said Nell.
“Daffodils are good,” said Lillie.
“To begin with,” said Nell.
Lillie dipped her cookie into her tea. Aha, thought Nell, that’s what you’re supposed to do with them. “So,” said Lillie, glancing at Nell obliquely, raising her eyebrows. That meant: You didn’t ask me here to look at a field.
“Oona wants a house,” Nell said.
“Lots of peoples want a house,” said Lillie placidly.
“But this is Oona.”
“So?” said Lillie. She knew who Oona was: she was Tig’s first wife. First wives, second wives – an old story.
“She wants me to buy the house, so she can live in it.”
Lillie’s teacup paused in the air. “She said it?” This was something new.
“Not out loud,” said Nell. “Not to me. But I know.”
Lillie took another cookie and dipped it into her tea, and settled herself