The House That Jack Built

TWELVE

The knocking on the door, coming so soon after the noise that had surrounded them, wasn't the relief to Rob and Julia that it was to Ianto, still barely able to move as he lay on his back in front of the unlit fire.

'What did he say?' Julia asked, looking at Ianto and fully expecting another onslaught of apparitions to attack them.

Rob grabbed the poker from beside the hearth. 'Nothing that makes me feel any better.'

'It's all right…' Ianto whispered, his chattering teeth cutting the words into brittle sounds as they tumbled from his mouth. 'Let them in…'

They heard the sound of the front door opening, and Rob turned to face the lounge door, poker in hand. 'So you say…' he whispered, tightening his grip on the brass handle. He was sick of being on the receiving end of the night's many impossibilities.

He heard the intruder shouting his name.

The door opened, and Rob prepared to fight his way past whatever was behind it. The poker was out of his hand before he had even been truly aware of swinging it.

'The door was open…' said the intruder.

'I saw you before.' It was Julia, putting her hand on her husband's shoulder as she spoke to the newcomer. 'You were with the police.'

'Sort of,' Gwen stepped into the room. 'We work with them occasionally.'

Jack pushed his way past Rob and Julia, dropping to his haunches by Ianto.

'Hi there, frigid,' he said with a smile.

'Sod off,' Ianto stuttered, 'and get something to warm me up.'

'Now may not be the time or place…' Jack turned to Rob and Julia. 'Got any alcohol?'

'No…' Rob was struggling to maintain any feeling of being in control. 'I was lighting a fire…'

'So light it.'

Rob stepped forward before anger stopped him. 'Look! What's going on here? You say you're with the police?'

'Not as such,' Gwen tried to force her face into the most reassuring shape she could manage, used to being the politician among them. 'We're independent of them. But yes, our paths cross from time to time. Why don't we sit down and go through what happened?'

'I'm not staying here a minute longer,' Julia said.

'We saw a woman appear out of thin air…' Rob shouted. 'Killed herself in the bath… not in our bathroom you understand, no, in the spare bloody bedroom…'

'There's a fat man…' Julia added, 'in an old suit… he smells…'

'Banging on the walls, voices in the TV…'

'Your friend, appearing out of nowhere in our airing cupboard…'

'Our bloody airing cupboard!'

Their voices were getting louder and louder, blending into one another.

Gwen knew if they carried on she'd never get them under control. 'Please!' she shouted. 'One at a time… We can handle this, but we need to know what's been going on.'

'Handle it on your own,' Rob said, grabbing Julia's hand. 'We're not staying…'

They marched out of the door, and Gwen turned to Jack.

'One thing at a time,' he spat. 'It's not as if I can shoot them. Though it is tempting.'

The walls shook as the front door slammed closed behind the terrified pair.

Jack struck a couple of matches and touched them to the dry newspaper in the hearth. 'All the home comforts…' he muttered, biting his lip as the words brought a memory to mind…

***

The agent wore his suit as if it were for a wedding or funeral, alien to its woollen threads. Whenever he thought Jack wasn't looking, he pulled at the white collar of his shirt, the starch irritating his skin.

'All the home comforts, Mister Harkness,' he said. 'Modern fixtures and fittings for both fashion and convenience.'

Jack ran his fingers along the patterns in the Lincrusta wallpaper. 'Yes, it's all very cutting edge.'

'Excuse me?'

'An American expression, probably,' Jack replied, brushing the comment away and also, with his finger, a light covering of dust from the Dado rail.

'Oh,' the agent laughed gushingly. 'Of course! America must be so exciting…'

'Especially if you live in San Francisco,' Jack replied. The agent looked bemused. 'Earthquake trouble,' Jack explained.

'Really? How awful. Mind you, we have the odd tremor here in Cardiff.'

Jack smiled. 'There must be a rift here or something.'

'Do you think so?' The agent looked genuinely concerned by the idea. 'I do hope not…'

'I'll take the risk.' Jack laughed and patted the agent on the arm. 'And the house.'

'Oh!' The agent was quite beside himself, and Jack began to suspect this was his first sale. 'How splendid!'

'Yes,' Jack replied, smiling at the man's enthusiasm. 'One thing though.' He stepped out into the hall. 'Might you be able to have a lock fitted to the study? I'm often involved in rather… delicate work.'

This made the agent almost purple with excitement. 'Aha! Secret work, is it, sir?' he asked. 'I thought you carried that look about you. One can always tell a man that might be involved in our country's more "specialised" services.' He winked.

'One would hope not,' Jack replied.

The agent went into a panic. 'Oh… I wasn't meaning to suggest you were in any way deficient in your… ah…'

Jack patted him on the shoulder before he had a fit in the hallway. 'Don't worry, I'm not a spy, and I'm pulling your leg. But yes, my work does often involve the safety of the nation. Sometimes even beyond it!'

The agent nodded and mopped at his sweating forehead. 'Sir, it is an honour then to assist you.' He tried a smile but he was still too nervous, so it gave the impression he was simply exhibiting teeth. 'Perhaps we should return to the office, where we can begin to make arrangements with your bank…'

'Bank?' Jack shrugged. 'I'll just pay cash if that's all right.'

The fire began to curl around the kindling, a cracking sound like a rifle shot bringing Jack out of his memory.

'Lovely,' Ianto stuttered, his teeth still chattering. 'Now if someone would just fetch me a mug of cocoa and enough brandy to knock out a horse, I'll be right as rain.'

'What happened?' asked Gwen.

'I was out on the street,' Ianto replied, 'grabbing some food and keeping my head down for half an hour.' He tugged the blanket tighter around him. 'There was a chronon surge… huge… and this woman… this is going to sound ridiculous… it was as if she was hit by a tram, except there was no tram. I could hear it, the wheels on the tracks, the smell of the ozone. I could even sort of feel it, the heaviness of it coming towards me. It hit her square on and sent her flying towards me. Still you couldn't see it, just this mangled woman, bones snapping but with no… reason.' He looked up at Jack and Gwen and rolled his eyes. 'And if you think that's unusual, just wait until the bit where I vanish into thin air and reappear in the airing cupboard upstairs.'

'Covered in ice,' Gwen added.

'Yes…' Ianto shivered. 'I bet things are going to fall off with frostbite.'

'If they do, I'm keeping 'em,' said Jack.

Gwen ignored him. 'What did you see?' she asked Ianto.

'Not much, to be honest. I've been a bit out of it. I heard the pounding on the walls and the TV turning on by itself.'

'Power surge…' Jack commented.

'And the walls?' Gwen asked.

'That'll be the ghosts.' Jack grinned. 'I'm going to take a look around.'

He marched out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

For a minute he stood in the hall, listening to Gwen as she told Ianto the history of the building. Around him the beams and joists of Jackson Leaves creaked under the weight of the memories they held for him.

He stroked the off-white banister.

'You need a cleaner,' he said, blowing the dust off his finger.

'What?' Jack asked from the first floor.

'"Pardon",' Alison replied. 'Not "what", you dreadful colonial.'

Jack's head appeared from over the banister above her head. 'Do forgive my lack of breeding, madam,' he joked. 'Might I enquire as to what it was that you said previously? My dull foreign ears struggled to catch your regal tone.'

'I said you needed a cleaner, the banister is filthy.'

'Just like its owner, then,' Jack replied.

She sighed but couldn't hide the smile on her lips. 'There's no hope for you.'

'Agreed, none whatsoever. So, do you like the house?'

'It could be lovely,' she replied, 'with a woman's touch.'

Jack smiled down at her. 'I say again: just like its owner, then.'

'Anyone's touch will suffice for him,' she replied, an air of sadness to her voice.

'But your touch is the sweetest.'

She joined him on the landing. 'So you say today,' she replied, 'but who will it be tomorrow?'

He took her in his arms. 'Stay the night and find out.'

She shivered in his embrace.

'You all right?' he asked.

She nodded. 'It felt like something touched me.'

'Give me a few moments and it certainly will,' he grinned.

She slapped his arm playfully. 'Really…' She looked around and then, seeing nothing, tried to dismiss her feeling of unease. She smiled. 'Perhaps you've got ghosts…'

'Too many to mention, but don't worry, I won't let them have you!' He lifted her off the floor and carried her towards the bedroom.

On the landing, Jack paused to breathe in the stale air… trying to remember the scent of Alison's perfume, of her skin.

Off the landing, the first room confused him. Where he had expected to see the bath, he found instead a tatty single bed and a brown carpet that he would have burned on principle had he had a match on him.

'Look at the state of you,' he whispered.

'Look at the state of you,' Miles said, running the sponge across Jack's shoulders. The soapy water making gritty, brown rivers of the dried mud on his back.

'I slipped,' Jack replied.

'Clearly… but what would the neighbours think,' Miles asked, 'had they happened to glance out of their window to see a naked man thrashing around in the mud.'

'They'd probably ask me to bring them some coal, too, save them going out in the rain.'

'You could have put some clothes on!'

Jack winked over his shoulder. 'I'd only have had to take them off again.' He reached over the side of the bath for the brandy bottle. 'Another drink?'

Miles shook his head. 'I'm away with the fairies as it is.'

Jack grinned and leaned over to kiss him. 'Indeed you are.'

***

The next room was still the main bedroom. Jack stepped inside, lifted up the collapsed, part-constructed wardrobe and leaned it against the wall. The bed was built but not made, just a bare mattress…

'You buy a house with cash and then seem unable to afford a bed,' Alison sighed, lying back on the mattress that lay in the middle of the room.

'I just keep forgetting,' Jack replied, rolling onto his front. He blew on her chest and chuckled as her nipple hardened in the cool air. 'Beds are for sleeping, and I don't do much of that.'

'I noticed,' she replied, not unkindly. She twisted to kiss him on the forehead and grabbed the blanket to wrap around herself. 'I'm going to marry him, you know.'

Jack propped himself up on his elbow. 'I know.'

'He loves me very much, and he's a good man.'

'I've never said otherwise.'

She threw him a glance. 'It's not like I have other offers.'

Jack nodded but didn't reply. He'd had that conversation too many times over the years and wasn't inclined to have it with Alison as well. If this was coming to an end — and it looked as if that was the case — then let it at least do so with some grace.

'I'm sure he can make you happy,' he said instead.

She stared at him. 'No you're not, and neither am I. But happiness is overrated. Sometimes you just have to settle for contentment.'

'Story of my life,' Jack said, stepping out of the bedroom and back onto the landing.

The bathroom was new, well, no… new to Jack but it could hardly be called new otherwise. It was a cheap suite with oyster-shell soap trays and a colour of yellow one could never have found outside a plastics factory. Little blue fish swam in circles on the tiles. It was ghastly.

Jack walked back out and made his way up to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs the landing offered two choices, a room to either side.

'What do you need so many rooms for, anyway?' Miles asked, gazing out of the window at the leafy trees of the road below.

Jack watched the muscles in Miles's legs and buttocks tighten as the man went on tiptoes. 'I like variety,' he replied, taking a sip of his drink. 'A room for every occasion.'

'Or guest?' Miles asked, turning around and treating Jack to a change of scenery.

'Sometimes,' Jack admitted. 'That bother you?'

'No. Why should it? I know the rules of our affaire .' Miles topped up his own glass from the decanter on the sideboard. He took a big mouthful. 'I'm going to marry her,' he said, and was then perplexed as to why this should cause so much hilarity in Jack. 'I'm glad my life amuses you so,' he said with some bite.

'It's not your life I was finding amusing,' Jack replied. 'It was mine.'

Both rooms were empty and in a much worse state than the rest of the house. It looked like nobody had been up here for years. A fat wolf spider hid in the corner of the skirting board, draped coyly in sheets of its web. Jack prodded at it with his boot but it refused to run, clinging to the paint-chipped wood with utter determination.

'To have and to hold…'

'… in sickness and in health…'

Jack tried to stifle a yawn. Church ceremonies bored him. Weddings were a poor excuse for distant family and even more distant friends to get together and bitch about a marriage that probably wouldn't last. As far as he was concerned, you could do that much easier in a bar, with the added bonus that some drunken old duffer in a frock wouldn't feel the need to keep bringing God into it.

'Heavenly father…' whined the priest, who was certainly as old — and if the volume of his proclamations was anything to go by — as deaf as the deity he worshipped, 'by your blessing let these rings be to Miles and Alison a symbol of unending love and faithfulness…'

Now there, thought Jack, is your problem already. Why set these poor kids up to fail before they've even got the rings on?

Alison looked towards the congregation and glimpsed Jack at the back. He gave what he hoped was a supportive smile, but maybe it didn't come out too well as she didn't look happy to see him. When she looked back at her husband-to-be, Miles caught the flicker of concern in her gaze. His brow furrowed slightly, perhaps worried that she was having second thoughts.

'… through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.'

The amen rippled through the crowd, and Miles also noticed Jack. His response was, if anything, worse than Alison's. The sudden flash of panicked guilt that ran across his face was plain, and Jack realised he shouldn't have come.

'The rings?' asked the priest.

'Er…' Miles stammered. 'Yes… sorry…' He took the ring from his best man and placed it rather nervously on Alison's finger.

The priest continued intoning the words to the service: 'I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage.'

Miles repeated them. 'I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage.'

'With my body I honour you…'

'With my b… body I honour you…' A thin sheen of sweat was beginning to blossom on his forehead.

Alison, seeing his discomfort, had clearly assumed the worst. Somehow he must know about her and Jack. She too began to tremble, which only fuelled Miles's panic. How could he have trusted Jack not to tell Alison about their affaire ? Would Alison tell? His reputation would be ruined…

As they continued to repeat the words of the service, becoming more and more visibly concerned, a faint mumble began to build throughout the congregation. What was wrong? Was it just nerves? Was one of them going to back out?

Jack winced at the discomfort of it all. The mood in the church worsened by the second and, when he couldn't take it a moment longer, he began to make his way out of the back door. He shouldn't have come in the first place. The least he could do was ensure he made himself scarce now.

As he stepped out into the fresh air, taking deep lungfuls of it in relief, the priest's voice followed him:

'Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.'

Jack stepped into the other room, a train of dusty spider's web dragging behind him. It was just as dilapidated, the paintwork peeling, the wood flaking.

Jack looked out of the window, the arcs of the streetlights pulled into contortions by the heavy rain beating against the glass. His own reflection looked back at him, and he realised he was crying. This surprised him…

…he wasn't a man prone to tears but he felt them now. Whether they were through sadness or guilt he couldn't rightfully say. Looking down on Alison's pale-blue face, her hair plastered against her head with dirty river water he didn't see anything of the beautiful woman he had known. He couldn't imagine having kissed those wrinkled cheeks, those puffy lips. The Alison he had known was long gone.

'Not married more than twenty-four hours,' said the police inspector. 'Husband drowns her and then — when the prissy little sod can't take the guilt of it — comes running to us. Says it was to protect his reputation, would you believe? Not worth much now, is it? Murdering bastard. Nothing strange to it though…oh…'scuse me…'

The inspector hawked phlegm into a yellow handkerchief and rubbed at his bushy moustache.

'Touch of the vapours, isn't it? As I was saying, seems perfectly straightforward, not the sort of thing you lot need to poke your nose into. Don't know why anyone called you, frankly. Not much you can do for her, is there?'

'No,' Jack replied, 'not any more.'

Jack rubbed at his eyes, left the room and went down the stairs to check his face in the bathroom mirror. He was damned if he was going to let Gwen and Ianto see he'd been crying. Hadn't he been thinking earlier how he couldn't afford to get caught up in his memories? They were no use to him, nothing but dead weight that would drag him down if he let them.

He grinned at the mirror, looking fine, and went back out onto the landing. A flash of movement caught his eye, something red in the shadows of the main bedroom. He looked around. Nothing there.

As he descended the stairs, the front door opened and Rob and Julia walked back in.

'Changed your mind?' Jack asked as Julia slammed the front door closed behind her.

'Impossible…' Rob muttered, sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor, leaving a snail-trail of rainwater behind him on the paintwork. ' Impossible.'

'What is?' Jack asked.

'What's going on?' Gwen asked, stepping out of the lounge.

'It's gone…' Julia said.

'Gone?' said Jack.

Julia gestured beyond the front door. 'Out there… It's all… It's gone.'

Jack pushed past her and reached for the door handle.

'You don't want to go out there,' Julia said.

'I do,' he replied, the words bringing his memories back to him as he pulled the door open and stepped out onto the front step. The rain was still just as heavy, and he pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked out across the gravel, past the SUV and to the mouth of the drive. The street beyond had vanished, nothing but a wall of darkness filling the driveway.

He held his hand out in front of him and moved forward. As his toes drew close to the pavement, his hand suddenly felt numb. Staring at it, he gave an impressed whistle as it appeared to fade out of sight. Pulling it back, there was a resistance to the air but his hand was returned to him.

'What is it?'

Jack turned to see Gwen. 'No idea,' he admitted. 'But for now I'd say we're stuck here, wouldn't you?'