Accidents in the Home by Tessa Hadley Page A

was married to the man who owned the garage, and it was from her that they had collected the key to the house at the beginning of the holiday. The owner lived in London and rarely visited; his wife had asthma and couldn’t manage the house’s dampness. Mrs. Tierney was also supposed to come on their last day, a Friday, to read the electricity meter; they were leaving very early on Saturday morning to catch their ferry. For some reason she turned up with a carful of friends in the middle of Thursday night. Into the deep seclusion of their sleep there burst the roar of an engine with a squealing fan belt, the slushy bite of tires in the gravel, the ill-suppressed sounds of partying from the car. A car door banged; there was incomprehensible calling, a scream of laughter abruptly broken off. Then someone pounded on the great front door knocker.
    â€”Go round the back! someone else shouted.
    All the adults within the house were at once bolt upright, startled out of themselves, expecting for split seconds whatever dreadful thing it is that one expects to break in roughly and unceremoniously in the small hours upon one’s sleep. Bram jumped out of bed and grabbed his bathrobe, but Ray in pajamas was downstairs ahead of him, pulling open the big front door they had learned from the locals not to bother to bolt.
    â€”What in heaven’s name?
    Bram and Tinsley and Opie and Clare loomed supportively behind Ray in the hall.
    Mrs. Tierney, with black dyed hair and a worn face and lipstick applied approximately to her mouth, was very much the worse for whatever was in the bottle they were handing around in the car. She swayed and came to rest against the door lintel. She was wearing some kind of pale trouser suit, which, as they stood confronted, looked farcically like a match with Ray’s pajamas; perhaps that was why when he swung the door open there was another outbreak of laughter from the car, abruptly choked off. Inside the house the English family in their nightwear were sober and frowning. A crumple-faced man they didn’t recognize pushed his way in front of Mrs. Tierney on the steps, waving his cigarette that left its trail of odor on the night, sounding as if he was placating them and offering a long explanation that they could only partly follow.
    â€”She’s come to read the meter? Tinsley snorted in disbelief.
    â€”That’s right, missus, said the man. We’ve come to read the meter.
    â€”But it’s the middle of the night, objected Ray.
    â€”Sure it is, said the man. Only tomorrow she has a nephew coming up from Cork (he pronounced it Cork-e). The t’ing was, she would have come over here earlier.… He circumscribed a significant shape with his cigarette on the night.
    â€”Only she’s pissed out of her mind and doesn’t know what time of night or day it is, said Tinsley.
    â€”I thought it best, said Mrs. Tierney, swaying in hostile dignity, to wait till you’d have finished using the electric.
    â€”Oh, for God’s sake, let them come in and get on with it.
    The Vereys in their pajamas traipsed through the downstairs rooms of the house after Mrs. Tierney and her friend. Mrs. Tierney couldn’t remember where the meter was; they all offered more or less helpful suggestions, opening cupboards, poking around in the cloakroom and under the stairs. Others from the car drifted after them into the house, a teenage girl in a short dress and an overweight young man with a bald patch like a tonsure and a worn shiny brown suit. Clare could not be quite sure how much the party’s air of suppressed hilarity was directed at the English holidaymakers; in the dining room the girl heaved up one of the sash windows and shouted something out to whoever was left behind in the car. There was another explosion of laughter from outside, and a thick waft of black cold humming night air into the room, dispersing the smell of their sausage-and-cabbage supper.
    Strangely,