The Switch
White dust sheets cover every item of furniture as far as she can see into the house, ghostly testaments to its desertion. Daylight slices through the boarded windows to cut portions of the oak block floor into bright squares, like haphazard stepping stones leading over some unknown pond. Dust dances in the glare, like twinkling stars, its clarity enriched by the gloom of the distant interior.
Genna Reed stands outside the entrance, rain pouring from the slate sky, and absorbs every detail of this atmosphere, her nose catching the sweet cedar that she remembers of the house, her body sinking into the comforting nostalgic warmth of a childhood spent within its walls.
She smiles, and yet she also trembles; not enough for her to worry that Steven might notice, but enough for her to be aware of: this is the first time in twenty years that she's set foot inside her childhood home.
It is a moment to savour, and as she steps across the threshold, she lifts her leg in through the doorway almost in slow motion, and carefully sets it down on the oak floor.
“I’m home,” she whispers.
A sudden squall of wind howls in through the door from behind her, lifting her shoulder-length chestnut curls to briefly hide her face. The gust catches the chandelier and its crystals clink delicately, like rusted wind chimes.
In her peripheral vision she sees movement. She turns in time to see a picture frame fall glass-side down on top of a bureau that runs along the stairs. She creeps across the hall and reaches to lift it back up, to see who is in the photograph.
“When you said you’d inherited a house, I didn’t think it would be a mansion.”
She snaps her hand back without touching the picture and turns to face Steven, who is looking around the hall with childish amazement. He surges past her to the foot of the stairs.
She sighs and says, “It’s not really a mansion-”
“This is a great place.” He caresses the mahogany banister. “A really great place.”
She walks across the hall, a ray of daylight gleaming over her chestnut curls. She enters the nearest room, the door creaking as she pushes it in. The interior is darkened by the shutters over the windows, and the oak floor runs all the way through, the gloom amplified by its dark stain. Steven enters and begins uncovering the furniture like a child unwrapping presents on Christmas morning.
“Most of this stuff is antique,” he says.
The furniture is old, that is all. Its financial worth is valueless to Genna. What the place represents to her is where the real value exists: the memories, the nostalgia, her very childhood. She creeps around the edge of the room, gazing up at the grand portraits of past kings and queens. She pauses before a portrait of Napoleon. It had been her father’s favourite, a possession that he cherished more than anything, or anybody. As a child she had never been allowed to touch it, and in fact had never been allowed in the same room as it until she was fifteen.
A nearby door clicks ajar, creaking slightly. She stares at it for a moment, trying to see through the crack into the gloom beyond. She turns back to Steven, but he is still busy uncovering furniture and examining ornaments. She turns back to the open door, stares a moment longer, as though willing herself the courage to go through, and then, before she can change her mind, slips through into the room beyond.
The shuttered windows allow in only a little of the daylight, which pierces the gloom in crisscrossing lasers of grey. The room is vast, with a high ceiling from which hangs two grand circular chandeliers. Baroque coving, which would have been more fitting inside some ancient mausoleum, runs everywhere. In the centre of the room is a single piece of covered furniture.
The light brightens and the floor flares with countless pools of shimmering sunlight. She searches them, eyes flicking from one to another, and the memories flood back.
The room was filled with hazy summer sunshine and a ten-year-old girl danced a waltz to Vivaldi’s Winter, her bare feet padding the sun drenched wood floor as she danced.
Smiling, Genna slips off her shoes and slides her bare feet towards the nearest pool of sunlight. It fades before she reaches it, and her smile fades with it. She slips her shoes back on and turns to the white dust sheet.
She gives it a slight tug and it slips away to reveal a piano. She caresses her hand over the wood, her fingers floating over the elaborately carved roses along the instrument's side, lovingly, ardently. She sits on the seat, delicately lifts the lid, and presses a key. The tune resonates through the room, and the nostalgia hits her again, hot and heady.
The room was again filled with hazy summer sunshine, and the same ten-year-old girl sat at the piano playing Moonlight Sonata with taught precision.
Genna dances her fingers over the keys and plays Moonlight Sonata with the same perfection. Her eyes well and a tear rolls down one cheek.
Footsteps bellow and she looks up to see Steven striding across the room towards her. She lifts her hands from the keys and silence engulfs the room, the spell broken. She carefully lowers the lid back over the keys.
“This house is great,” Steven says. “Are you going to sell it?” He twirls, looking up at the chandeliers. “You’d be crazy not to. It could make a million, easy.”
Genna stands and looks up to humour him, then edges away. Steven strides across the room and looks up at a portrait of a gaunt man which hangs over the fireplace.
“Who’s this?” He hears a door creak and turns to find Genna gone. “Gen?”
He waits for a reply, but there is none. He paces to the door and steps through only to be faced with what seems like an unending labyrinth of doorways and stairs. He sighs and marches into the maze.
“Genna!” he shouts. “Come on, I haven’t got time for this.”
To be continued...
