Читать книгу Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours - Freya North - Страница 25

The house was filled, during daylight, with the gibberish chatter of the toddler and the huffing and occasional yowls of the oversize dog. In the evenings, the pipes took over with their cacophony of gurgles and groans while elsewhere the house creaked and rattled sporadically. Recently, such sounds had faded benignly into the background and Tess began to notice instead the quiet that seeped its way through her once her baby was asleep and the dog was dead to the world. Initially, she wasn't sure if she liked it; it felt intrusive and confrontational because the only thing she could listen to was herself. She tried to trivialize it by thinking, well, it's a damn sight better than London where by now Upstairs Bloke would be crashing around, Over the Hallway would be having their flaming row and Ocado, Tesco and Sainsbury vans would be leaving their engines running, making their deliveries. How she used to exclaim, shut up, everyone, you'll wake the baby! Shut up everyone, I can't hear myself think! Thinking back, Tess realized how those warring sounds of London were easy to listen to because they had nothing to do with her. Hearing nothing, here in this old house, was far more confrontational.

Now, she could think. A bit too much, some days. Some evenings the quiet would wrap itself around her like a soft blanket and lull her into gentle fantasies of the life she intended to make for herself and Em. At other times, however, it could goad her relentlessly. See! No one here but you! You're on your own, hiding out here, slave to your secrets, stupid idiot girl!

On such occasions, the silence was like a clock that had stopped, trapping Tess in the present – a situation caused by her past and which tarnished the future. Those evenings, she felt frightened and though she rarely reached for the phone or turned to the TV, nor did she face her fears. Instead, on that initial surge of adrenalin and at the first prick of tears, she'd lunge for a book and immerse herself in the lives of others instead. She had to start off by reading out loud, until she felt settled enough to have the silence surround her again.

For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama – but imagining that Joe had liked that book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. His collection was vast and varied, from sumptuous coffee-table tomes to dense books about engineering, from the classics to modern masters and cutting-edge contemporary fiction. Tess was well aware it was escapism but what a way to pass another evening on her own. And anyway, wasn't that a function of fiction – a magical place that could transport you a world away? It wasn't as if she could solve anything just sitting there letting thoughts and memories and doom descend like a dark, damp veil. She'd done enough of that on evenings in London. Anyway, didn't Joe do just this when he was here, home alone – settle down with a good book until bedtime?

Sometimes, on a nondescript evening when her thoughts left her alone, Tess would tinker instead. This was different to the committed spring clean and reorganization she continued to devote much of her days to. Tinkering meant moving vases or clocks or the odd photo frame from here to there or from room to room; swapping the cushions in the TV room for those in the den, setting out the chessboard on the occasional table in the drawing room because, occasionally, it was good for such a table to have a purpose. Tinkering was finding a place for the phone books away from the lovely maps and atlases whose shelf they had shared. And it was when Tess was tinkering in the drawers of the hall console – let's put the pens here and the pads there, have the address book here, the takeaway leaflets in that folder there – that the phone rang. The suddenness of it was shrill and intrusive, having not been heard since that night in the bath that evening last week. Her hands were full of pens that she'd been systematically testing out on a scrap of paper rejecting any which were faint or which smudged. It had been a satisfying job that allowed for inventive doodling, which she was enjoying, but she ought to answer the phone. Putting the pens to one side, she picked up the receiver.

‘The Resolution – good evening?’

She makes the place sound like a hotel.

He waited a moment.

‘I'd like to book a room for tomorrow night, please,’ he said, ‘for a week.’

Tess thought, he sounds a bit like Joe. But then she thought, why would he phone to book a room?

‘I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number,’ she said. ‘This is a private residence.’

She sounded so affronted that Joe had to laugh. ‘Tess – it's me, Joe.’

She cringed but hid it behind a defensive tone. ‘I know that. I knew all along.’

‘You have a very – particular – telephone manner. Made the old place – the residence – sound like a posh guest house.’

‘Would you rather I didn't answer the phone then, Joe?’

The barb to her voice snagged against him and he thought, dear God, here we go again. But tonight it amused him more than it irritated him because it was – well, it was so Tess, really. And he could clearly envisage her in his hallway, her cheeks reddening with her silly indignation. It was tempting to wind her up a little more.

She listened hard to Joe's silence and wondered if she'd irked him and whether he might say, yes, Tess, don't answer my bloody phone.

‘I didn't mean it that way,’ she said.

‘I just thought I'd let you know I'll be back tomorrow.’

‘We were half expecting you last weekend.’

‘Things ran on.’

‘Good things?’

A flashback to Rachel's blow-job shot to mind. ‘Not bad.’

‘What time tomorrow?’ asked Tess. ‘Ish.’

‘Mid-afternoon, I would think,’ said Joe. ‘Ish.’

There was a pause.

Joe's coming back.

It was a concept privately welcomed by both. Tess thought of the beans on toast she'd had for supper – today, yesterday, probably the day before that too. Perhaps supper tomorrow would be different now. Proper. With wine. With conversation. And laughter. Joe just thought it would be nice to see her again.

‘Shall I – you know – have stuff in?’

‘Stuffing?’ But he knew what she meant.

She tried to sound casual. ‘Stuff – you know, fish, meat – for supper?’

She couldn't see him smiling; she could only hear the silence, which unnerved her. She wasn't to know that she hadn't over-stepped a mark, that over in Antwerp Joe was thinking to himself that he liked it that she'd asked. And that had she not, he liked to think he might have suggested the very same thing to her.

‘Sounds good,’ he said. He wasn't to know that suddenly she was in a knot as to whether there was enough in her purse – which she'd been keeping out of sight under her bed – to cover much stuff at all. ‘See you tomorrow, Tess.’

She wanted to keep him longer on the phone, to run away from her nagging thoughts to yak instead about the minutiae of her day. She could tell him how she'd enjoyed the Joseph Heller but not the Doris Lessing, that the downstairs loo was now a sunny yellow, that she'd worked out how to record from the television and had saved him a programme called Megastructures about a huge bridge somewhere, oh, where! oh, what was the bloody thing called! It's in Japan! She didn't want him to go just yet because then it would just be her in the house and another evening stretched ahead and made tomorrow seem a very long way off.

‘Bye then.’

‘Bye.’

She placed the handset back in the cradle thoughtfully and looked at the pens, all in a scatter, and couldn't remember which were for keeping. So she had to test them all out again. She saw that she'd doodled the word ‘Joe’ a number of times. She told herself it had been absent-minded scribbling, that if it had been Tamsin she'd just spoken to, she'd've written her name a number of times in a variety of colours and squiggles instead. But she certainly didn't want Joe seeing this. She'd be screwing it up and chucking it away.

Don't screw it up.

Don't chuck it away.

Well, the paper, yes. But not the thoughts released by his name.

She told herself to stop it at once. But then she reasoned that it was so quiet tonight – Wolf hadn't even piped up when the phone went and the pipes hadn't made a sound all evening. There was nothing on the box. Her eyes were too tired to start a new book. There was nothing to do but think about tomorrow. She was all on her own and that meant she didn't need to tell a soul what she was thinking. Deluded? So what! The little buzz was – nice.

Later, as she lay in bed still thinking about tomorrow, it crossed her mind whether to invite Mary to tea over the next few days. But she wouldn't – not just because Joe had never mentioned her so Tess oughtn't to interfere. She'd be doing nothing of the sort because actually she was looking forward to having Joe all to herself.

All morning, Em had been saying ‘wol’ over and over and Wolf had been careening around in circles, taking sudden bites at the base of his tail. Tess couldn't work out what Em was saying or why Wolf was doing this. She looked through his coat but could see only healthy skin, pink in places, grey in places. He continued to turn on his imaginary sixpence while Em implored wol at regular intervals.

‘Do you mean Wol-f?’ Tess pointed to the dog but Em continued to say wol.

‘Good God – Wolf, would you quit? You two need fresh air. Come on.’

For a girl born and bred in a city, Tess was not quite sure from where her belief in fresh air being the answer to all ills had stemmed. She'd never been particularly sporty, nor had long walks or the great outdoors shaped her childhood. Her memories of that time were of her parents’ emotional and physical inertia: her mother motionless, staring out of windows as if she could see no way out. Her father seemingly absorbed into the fabric of the armchair, Racing Post on his lap, racing on the television, telephone at his side. ‘It's a flutter – some men spend all Saturday at the bookies,’ he'd snap, implying they should be grateful for his company. How Tess had craved the house to herself back then. And now she has one.

She'd grown to enjoy living at the top of a hill and the physical exertion it demanded. She'd looked at herself in the bath the previous evening and had noticed how her legs were shapelier than she remembered. And she'd stood naked in front of the mirror and had liked what she'd seen. She'd felt the firmness of her limbs as she lay in bed, giving her thighs a squeeze, tensing and releasing her calf muscles, running her hands along her upper arms to feel the pleasing dip and rise of muscle definition. Sea air and steep hills were doing wonders for her health and physique, she decided. Negotiating West End crowds and having to share the recycled air on the underground never had.

‘Wolf, come. Now, you silly dog. Stop spinning. Let's get some fresh air.’

‘Wol!’

Down the drive, across the road, steeply down the divvety path to the Gardens. Daffodils that should be dead by now, a cheeky bluebell out way too early, a profusion of crocuses, bright primroses flirting at all who passed by. Occasionally, the fertile soil beneath certain trees encouraging ancient plants like wood anemone, dog mercury and toothwort. The buggy dinked and lurched over the uneven ground sending tremors up Tess's arms, but Em was too busy saying ‘wol’ to be bothered. Wolf was off foraging; Tess loved how convinced he seemed of his treasure trail despite always bounding back to her empty-mouthed save his huge lolling tongue.

Through the natural tangle of the woods, they came to a vantage point where they could look down onto the sudden and fantastically incongruous splendour of the fastidiously planted Italianate beds, all swirls and ogees and complex symmetry. The planting was rapidly covering the soil now and Tess thought how it would not be long until the flower buds, currently a scatter of multi-coloured beads, would be pulled by summer into full bloom. What are you? Tess wondered, what colours will you be? She'd like to know more about plants, she thought. Maybe Joe has a book about local flora. Did he really, really mean it when he said the position at the house was long-term? With so much that had never been definite in her life, it was stranger still how comforting was the notion of her stay here being potentially indefinite.

She looked at all the empty benches, imagining them occupied in warmer times ahead. Not by the kids from the jewel streets – Amber, Pearl, Diamond, Emerald, Ruby, Garnet, Coral – who loitered and larked around the station but, Tess imagined, by visitors or the retired folk of town like Mary. People with the time to sit, who liked to look at flowers and feel the day on their faces. And for me, she thought. All year round, there'd be room enough in the gardens and the woods for her little entourage too.

They continued to walk down the steep bank; rather Tess walked, Em was transported and Wolf galloped a circuitous route. Em's arm suddenly shot out, a fat little index finger pointing with great conviction as she gave a triumphant ‘wol!’. Tess looked. And then she grinned as she crouched by the buggy kissing Em's hands and burying her nose in her tiny palms.

‘Clever, clever Em,’ she said. ‘Mummy's clever, clever girl.’ She gazed through the gates at the Woodland Centre. Closed it may have been, but on the side of the wall a large colourful cartoon owl with binoculars around his neck solicited them with his friendly wave. She'd never noticed him before, which was not to say that her daughter hadn't.

‘Wol,’ said Tess and Em agreed. ‘Can you say Owl?’ Tess asked. Em nodded earnestly and said ‘wol’ again. ‘Wol it is,’ Tess said softly, ‘wol it is.’ They stood, looking through the gates, waving at the wall and the wol.

When they finally continued their walk through the gardens, crossing the Poohsticks bridge and following the miniature railway and Skelton Beck down to the coast and the coffee shop looking out to sea, Tess felt a surge of immense contentment and wellbeing. Fresh air was only partly the reason. Another was having just bumped into Lisa and her toddler again, and a further open invitation to the singalong, or the mums’ coffee morning or the playground. Lisa marvelled at Tess's news of Wol. And actually, what struck Tess was that for Em too this place now had its own significance; its own unique gifts, albeit in the shape of a cartoon owl. There might be times when she kidded herself but Tess couldn't kid Em. Over and above her mother saying, this is a jolly nice place, Em! let's live here! Em had somehow found something in it all for herself that she liked too.

When Joe pulled into the drive, the first thing he saw was the increased size of the bonfire pile and he thought to himself, Christ, what has she thrown out now? And then he thought, Christ, what's she done inside the house this time? And then he realized, bugger, I forgot the mould-resistant paint I promised her. He sat, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel and, though the journey had been tiring and he wanted nothing more than to unpack, do a few emails and then unwind with a large glass of wine decadently early, he couldn't bring himself to switch off the engine. Instead, he put the car into reverse, turned fast and drove away.

They didn't see him but he saw them. An unassuming girl in jeans, trainers, a sludge-coloured shapeless top, her hair haphazardly tied away from her face; a rangy mangy dog lagging behind her, a buggy which she pushed ahead. Every few footsteps, the girl slowed down, looked over her shoulder and implored the dog to catch up. All the while, her lips moving, chatting to the dog, to the child, about goodness knows what. It struck Joe how Tess looked so much younger and plainer than he knew her to be. He'd seen her prettiness and wondered why she would downplay it. She could make a bit more of herself easily enough. Have a haircut. Choose a nice sweater. Ditch the trainers. Buy a new pair of jeans. Yet there was something that was just right because of its unwavering naturalness. Another glimpse in the rear-view mirror revealed Tess standing in the middle of the road urging Wolf over, like a lollipop lady ushering a recalcitrant schoolboy. What you see is what you get with Tess, Joe thought. Unlike Rachel who, without make-up, looked totally different. Or Nathalie, who in plain underwear just might not hold the same allure. He thought it was probably a better thing to hide under nondescript clothes, than to brandish a fraudulent appearance with a palette of make-up or drawers of dazzling lingerie. And then he thought, for Christ's sake, just get the bloody paint.

At the bottom of the drive, Tess told herself not to be disappointed if Joe's car wasn't there. But it wasn't and she was.

An hour later, she heard the car before Wolf because he was still preoccupied with the gremlins in his tail. And Em wasn't aware that she should be listening out for anything, so she continued an intricate game with the tube from the toilet roll and a ping-pong ball. Tess, though, didn't have anything she ought to be doing so she'd been loitering at the edges of windows. The car door opened and shut. Front door or back door – she wavered. She thought she should be seen to be doing something, not just standing there waiting. She took a step towards the back door. Stopped. Walked towards the hallway. Stopped. Picked up Em then put her down again. Wouldn't he be in by now?

She looked through the window in the hall, standing well back and swaying to increase her field of vision but remain unseen. Joe was not in the driveway. She went into the kitchen and sneaked a look out to the side of the garden. And there he was, circumnavigating the bonfire heap. He picked something up. Oh God, not that dreadful old stringless tennis racquet. Tess laughed abruptly and found herself rapping on the windowpane. He looked up and located her, saw her wagging her finger at him. He gave an imaginary backhand and forehand with the racquet before shrugging and returning it to the heap.

Tess thought, I really ought to wipe this grin off my face.

‘Paint.’

‘I'll start immediately, Mr Saunders.’

But she knows he doesn't mean it as a command; he's holding out two tins so she says thank you and takes them off him and through to the boot room.

‘No problem,’ he says, following her and he doesn't say, actually, it was a bloody problem finding the sodding stuff.

She feels a little hyper, nervy; she wants to show him what she's done – the utility room, the downstairs loo, the start she's made on the den as he calls it though she's taken to calling it the snug. She wants to ask him about Wolf's tail. She wants to tell him all about ‘wol’. She wants to say, shall we have a cup of tea? and then make it good and strong, served in her own cups and saucers. She wants to say, it's nice to see you, Joe. She wants to say, I'm going to cook us up a treat this evening.

‘I'm putting a wash on – do you have any darks?’

And though Joe would rather have been asked if he wanted a cuppa, in a peculiarly domestic way the emotion behind her offer feels much the same.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I'll just unpack, then.’

And as he goes upstairs to his room to sort out his darks for the wash, Tess calls after him.

‘Cup of tea?’

And he smiles, which she can't see. She can only hear his pause. But then he says, lovely. And she exhales a sigh of relief that she hopes he hasn't heard.

She knows she feels disproportionately happy. But so what, she says to herself. So what.

She'd overcooked the fish and was furious with herself. If she hadn't apologized over and over and if she'd taken her eyes off his every mouthful, he would have enjoyed the dish more.

‘Anything's better than room-service,’ he said lightly. ‘That came out wrong,’ he added, not wanting to incite her stroppy side. Not tonight.

Tess acquiesced. ‘Was your trip good, then?’

‘Busy,’ Joe said. ‘France, Belgium, London since I last saw you.’

‘Do you like London?’

‘Love it.’

‘Friends there?’

‘A few – clients and colleagues, mostly, but they're a good bunch.’

‘Are you wined and dined, then, in the evenings?’ and she knew she wanted to hear him say, no, I just chill out on my own in the hotel room and order room service.

‘Mostly,’ he said.

An emotion swooped down on her so suddenly it was like a fishbone caught in her throat. She wondered about its provenance as she tried to sip away its sharpness but the wine tasted a little sour. Was it envy? Did she envy him his trip – the wining and the dining and the throb of London or Belgium or France? But what did this say about her newfound affection for here? Hadn't this place nourished her, provided her with a very literal breath of fresh air? Hadn't it nailed the coffin closed on city living? Lonely she might feel up here, some evenings, some afternoons, whole days too, all on her own, but she hadn't felt stir-crazy. Yet it seemed Joe enjoyed a perfectly good time away from here. And then it struck her that it wasn't Joe she envied, at all. It was whoever was showing him the bright lights and exciting times; she envied them their time with him. Faintly ridiculous, really, that this could cause her discomfort, but she couldn't deny the emotion. And, as she drained her glass, it occurred to her that actually, it might not be envy, pure and simple. There might be insecurity in there too. How could she hope to compete?

‘Can't remember the last time I went out at night,’ she muttered. ‘Pre Em, that's for sure.’

‘I'll bet you the library has notices about babysitters,’ Joe said helpfully. ‘You should treat yourself.’

Tess shrugged.

‘Have you met anyone, made any friends, since you've been here?’

That lovely Lisa whose invitations Tess had thus far not responded to – what would Joe make of that? She felt a bit pathetic. She could have said Mary. But actually, she couldn't – it would be contentious and untimely and she'd decided to keep Mary to herself a while longer. She could say Laura but that would be complicated and it wasn't exactly true.

‘Seb,’ she said, knowing she'd have to be brief because there was so little she could add.

‘Seb who?’

‘Seb the surfer.’

Joe's look lasted but a split second, but when Tess saw his eyes darken and focus she wondered if she recognized something – a single shot of unease.

‘Seb the Surfer, eh?’ Joe said lightly though he wondered whether Seb the Sodding Surfer had managed to lure Tess onto the beach, for a frolic in the waves. ‘Anyway, I'm back for a week or so now.’ To both of them, this came out sounding as though she should be at his beck and call. ‘So – if you – well, supper and stuff.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘I'll be going into the Middlesbrough office most days, but I'll be working from home sometimes. So perhaps lunch too – on those days.’

‘OK.’

‘A week or so,’ Joe repeated, ‘maybe two.’

They took inordinate interest and time with the fruit salad.

‘Do you want me to ease off the renovations when you're in the house?’

‘I don't see why you should – you don't strike me as a noisy labourer.’

‘You haven't heard me singing along to the radio.’

‘And I suppose this is when Emmeline and Wolf are asleep? So it's a case of the lesser of two evils, then? You caterwauling – or them howling and squawking.’

If it wasn't for his wry wink, Tess would have taken offence and made it known.

‘Hey,’ she objected, ‘I can hold a tune. And Em's vocabulary is increasing daily – she knows the word for owl.’

‘Isn't “owl” the word for owl?’

‘You may think so,’ Tess said, waggling her knife at him, ‘but I think you'll find it's “wol”.’

‘She's very sweet, your little 'un,’ Joe said and Tess had to physically sit on her hand because it would be so easy to touch his arm. ‘Very sweet.’

‘And actually, your dog's not so bad,’ Tess said and she tipped her chair back a little to look under the table and give Wolf a nudge with her foot. ‘I've grown rather fond of Wolf.’ She could so easily have said, and I've met your mum and she's a very nice lady. But not tonight. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that, thought Tess, scrunching her toes into Wolf's coat.

‘I'm knackered,’ Joe said. ‘Thanks for dinner – I'll do the honours tomorrow, if you like, if you're around.’

‘Of course I'll be around,’ Tess said. ‘Where else would I be!’

Joe thought about this as he cleared the plates away. She could've said, where else would I go. But she phrased it where else would she be. It wasn't that there was nowhere she could go; it was that there was nowhere she'd rather be. Or was it all just semantics? And why was he analysing his house-sitter's turn of phrase? And why was he wondering again where Seb the Surfer fitted in?

‘I really am tired,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’

‘I'm going to have an early night too,’ Tess agreed, though she sat at the kitchen table a little while longer, gazing at the space Joe had left.