Nine

Kieran remembered the exact moment when he had fallen in love with Lin. It was etched deep in his brain.

He and Ruth had always thrown a party on New Year’s Eve, and that year was no different. They had moved into the Priory in August, and this was the first time they would have room to move, room for Kieran to be the expansive host he had always fondly imagined himself to be.

The Priory matched a picture in his head that he seemed to have carried with him since childhood. The village itself had something of a schizophrenic character. At the eastern end there was a long row of council houses facing scrubby fields. But, as you then descended the hill, the road curved round to reveal a main street, and down there was a common and a stream, and several beech trees, and a spectacularly ugly village hall roofed in black corrugated iron. It was a place of miniatures: thin pavements, small windows, low eaves. On his first visit he had found the sign for the Priory propped up in an overgrown hedge, and had driven through the broken gate to see the house looking blandly golden against its backdrop of green.

It was a low, square house in an acre of lawn and woodland, sitting at the flat bottom of the valley. Behind the house were a couple of pasture fields, and then the rapidly rising slope of the hill beyond, pale and treeless except for its ancient circle of chalk. The Droddin, as it was called, was four concentric circles cut into the hill’s gradient, but only one still remained clear: the central one, about a hundred feet across. The remaining circles spread away from it rather like ripples on water, only just visible under the soil. All down the slope the hill was ridged from soil slippage, so the whole effect was of one giant green pool into which a prehistoric stone had been thrown. Behind that rose the stocky white finger of the Hamble stone tower, a Victorian memorial. When Ruth first came to see the house, she had paused in the driveway, looked up at the hill and said ironically, ‘Oh, how nice. Its own halo and candle.’

Kieran had painted such a glowing picture before her visit that she told him it ought to be called the Shrine and not the Priory. It was far too expensive for them and, once they moved in, they found out that all its appealing little idiosyncrasies were of the expensive kind, too. The back stairs, for instance, that he had so loved on first sight—a crooked flight that ran from a back bathroom down to the kitchen—proved to have dry rot in the panelling. The water came out of all the taps rust-red at times. The heating boiler expired in the first month, and there was a leak in the roof. The whole place, with the onset of winter, smelled terribly of damp.

But Kieran loved it. One morning, coming downstairs wrapped against the cold in his old plaid dressing gown, he had emerged into the hallway at the exact moment that a wintry sun touched the floor through the opaque glass panels on either side of the door. Silhouetted on the glass itself, like a Japanese painting, was a bird. It was perfectly outlined and still. He had felt this was some sort of subtle gift: a good omen, a blessing.

Although Ruth didn’t share his passion for the place—he wondered fondly if she had ever experienced such an emotion—she nevertheless did not complain at either the costs or the cold. They kept the dining room, drawing room and music room empty that winter, because they couldn’t afford to furnish them; but she made sensibly tough covers for the kitchen chairs and table, and turned the little study into their sitting room where the patched leather couch from his campus office sat looking very much like a poor relation. Ruth refused to buy cheaper furniture or carpets just to fill the rooms. ‘We’ll do one room at a time, as we can afford it,’ she insisted.

For the party she had performed a miracle.

The empty rooms all lay at the front of the house and, instead of trying to hide them, Ruth made a feature of the echoing space there. On Christmas Eve they had bought three huge trees. They had put one in the flagstoned hall, one in the drawing room, and one in the dining room. Ruth put candles ready on the bare sills, fireplaces and floors. They had then decorated the trees with silver foil and heavily berried holly from the village hedges. Candles lit the trees in the side rooms, and a massive log fire glowed on the one in the hall. When it got dark, the effect was magical. The vast dark green aura of the trees in the high-ceilinged empty rooms was otherworldly—almost primitive—as if earth spirits had invaded them.

He and Ruth had toasted each other. ‘You’re a genius,’ he told her.

She had smiled in that brisk way of hers. ‘I have my moments, I think.’

On New Year’s Eve morning he asked her, over breakfast, ‘Shall I invite Lin Harris?’

‘If you like.’

He had buttered his toast. ‘She seems to be all alone at the moment. She might be grateful.’

Ruth didn’t answer. She finished her coffee and began working on the crossword. He looked up and saw her head bent over the newspaper. She had a birthmark just below her ear on the right-hand side of her face, a curiosity that he found touching, as if she were showing a fault, a fracture, in her orderliness. Probably, his pity for her, for the composed woman with such a central flaw, was at the heart of his love for her. And, although he did not know it yet, it was this same sympathy for the flawed that drew him to Lin. Lin’s defencelessness despite all her brilliance. Ruth’s infertility in the centre of all her abundant accomplishment.

‘Perhaps I won’t ask her,’ he said.

But he did.

He was driving into work that morning, only two days after seeing Lin back to the cold room in which she lived, and he glimpsed her in the street just before the university buildings. She had been sitting by herself on a seat, reading, though it was freezing cold. He had pulled the car over immediately, and run back towards her.

‘Lin,’ he had said, ‘what are you doing?’

She had waved the book at him. ‘Reading.’

‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you waiting for someone?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He had felt ridiculously disappointed at this, and it must have shown in his face.

‘I’ll come into work this afternoon,’ she continued.

‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ he told her.

She had closed the book, smiling a little with her head bowed.

‘Would you like to come to a party?’ he asked.

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

She had pursed her lips.

‘My wife would like you to come,’ he added. Why had he mentioned that? To give his invitation an air of respectability, he supposed.

She wrote down his address in pencil on the flyleaf of the book.

He had then got back into his car, and, just as he drove off, he saw her being met by a boy of her own age. The boy took her hand, and she danced down the row of benches, the hem of her coat held up in one hand. That image remained with him for hours, days: her small, thin form revealed by the open coat, her fingers gracefully splayed, her toes pointed.

She came to the party.

The invitation said eight o’clock, and most guests dutifully arrived on the hour. By the time Lin knocked on the door two hours later, the party had moved back to the kitchen, where Ruth had laid out the food. There were only two couples in the candlelit hallway. Kieran had gone to open the door and found Lin standing there, looking nervous and lonely, clutching a bottle of red wine to her chest. She was wreathed in the coat.

It was desperately cold outside.

‘Come in,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t see any lights from the lane,’ she said. She stepped over the threshold. The people still in the hall stopped talking and gazed at her.

‘Can I take your coat?’ he asked.

He eased her arms out of the velvet-cuffed sleeves, reduced to that damp-scrub feel at the cuffs, and took the bottle of wine from her. She was wearing a black T-shirt and a short black skirt. Her neck and arms were thin and bony-white in the candle’s light. He noticed that her shoes were muddy.

‘You haven’t walked?’ he asked.

‘Only from the bus stop.’

He stared at her. The nearest stop was on the main road over the hill. It was at least a mile and a half away along narrow, unlit roads. It had never crossed his mind that she wouldn’t get a taxi or a lift.

‘Where’s your friend?’ he had asked, looking past her into the darkness.

‘What friend?’ she said.

‘You came all on your own?’

‘Why not?’

He led her down the hall. ‘We’re just eating,’ he said. Falsely cheerful, his voice boomed along the empty space. ‘Come along and meet Ruth.’

She had followed him into the kitchen, where there was a crush. He couldn’t see his wife, so instead grabbed a plate from the table and forced it into Lin’s hands.

‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Anything.’

‘Well … give me a clue at least.’

‘Anything.’ She had lowered her voice, and her head, and her gaze was fixed on the table. There were bowls of salad and pasta in front of her, but the serving spoons had disappeared—moved further up the line. The woman directly in front of Lin was talking at the top of her voice about the parish council and some boundary dispute.

In the line ahead, two men were calling at each other across other people’s heads.

‘Venison sausage! Four quid a pound—makes them himself—shoots the bloody things himself—you go along the road—on the left …’

Kieran saw Lin begin pulling at the hem of her skirt. She was trying to pull it further down over her bare knees.

He elbowed his way through the crowd, glimpsing Ruth in the pantry, talking to several other women as they dished up food. All of their guests were people Ruth knew. Many of them already wore that blurred expression of swiftly consumed drinks. When Kieran brought Lin’s drink back to her, she was standing in the same place, with her plate still empty.

At that moment the woman next to her turned round and gave her a look of frank astonishment.

‘And who do you belong to?’ she asked.

Kieran gave Lin her glass. ‘Lin is my assistant at the university,’ he said. ‘Lin—this is Angela Wadham.’

‘Assistant?’ Angela said, laughing. ‘My God, I thought you were someone’s daughter!’

That was possible. Lin was at least fifteen years younger than anyone else in the room, and had that hangdog, bruised and embarrassed look of a teenager dragged to a parents’ party.

‘Lin is preparing my manuscript for the publisher,’ he explained.

Angela peered down at Lin. ‘So you’re studying history?’

‘No,’ Lin said.

‘My son’s at Sussex,’ Angela turned to Kieran. ‘Politics, you know—I ask you!’

‘Lin is very clever,’ Kieran said. ‘She has had several things published herself already.’

Angela Wadham ignored his reference to Lin. ‘What do you think of this appraisal?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Kieran asked.

‘This appraisal committee. They want to do a survey of the village.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it,’ he admitted.

‘It’s an invasion of the parish function,’ she said. ‘We can’t persuade you to stand for the parish council?’

‘I leave all that sort of thing to Ruth,’ Kieran said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lin put down her still-empty plate and turn away.

‘Do you think I could ask Ruth?’ Angela Wadham persisted. ‘She must work awfully long hours already. She’s a consultant for the nursing home, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, I …’ His gaze wandered away. Lin was nowhere to be seen.

‘So would she have the time?’

He smiled. ‘Would you excuse me just a second?’

He had walked away briskly, back down the hall—into the gloom. Putting his head around the dining—room and drawing-room doors, he saw that she was not in either place. He went to the front door.

She was already halfway down the drive.

‘Lin!’

She neither stopped nor looked back.

‘Lin!’

He stepped outside. It was icy cold, and the grass had a sheen that promised frost. His breath floated in clouds in front of him. He began to jog along the drive, past the row of parked cars. He caught her up underneath the trees by the entrance.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘Going home.’

‘But you only just got here!’

‘It was a mistake,’ she said.

He pulled her arm. ‘What do you mean? What’s a mistake?’

She wriggled away from him. ‘Coming here—all this.’ She nodded in the direction of the cars.

‘But why? Lin, you’ve only been here two minutes. Where are you going?’

‘Back to the bus.’

‘It’s over a mile from here.’

They were out in the lane now, edged on both sides with ten-foot hedges that bowed slightly towards the road. ‘More like two.’ She smiled.

He stepped in front of her. ‘You can’t walk that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well—something might happen to you.’

‘What?’ She seemed amused.

‘An accident, anything …’

‘You mean I might get raped?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Out here in Never-Never Land?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The land of the venison sausage.’

‘Sorry?’

She turned away, shaking her head.

‘Let me at least get the car,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you to the stop.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Stay here a minute.’

Exasperated, he ran back to the house. His car keys were in his jacket pocket. It took him a full five minutes to negotiate his way out, and by the time he got to the lane she was nowhere to be seen. He accelerated through the dark, cursing her under his breath. At the village centre, he saw her standing by the little parish hall, staring up at the flat-topped hill with its prehistoric patterns. He stopped the car and opened the door.

‘Get in,’ he said.

She hesitated a moment, then did so.

He started to pull away. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said.

‘Parish appraisal,’ she said. ‘What’s that?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

‘Politics—I ask you!’ she mimicked.

‘Look, I barely know the woman. I don’t know what the hell she was on about.’

They drove in silence. It took barely five minutes to get to the main road. The bus stop—a solitary post on the very summit of another hill, and exposed to every element—stood in its lay-by ahead of them. He tried to work out, as he drove, why he was so unreasonably, chokingly angry with her.

She put her hand on the door handle.

‘Wait until the bus comes,’ he told her. ‘You’ll see it coming, miles away from here.’

They waited.

The night was pitch dark, and very still.

‘Didn’t you ever have parties, at home?’ he asked.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Well, then …?’

‘Not like yours,’ she said. ‘Not that kind.’

‘What kind, then?’

She laughed softly, and leaned her head against the window.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

She was silent for some time, her breath forming an opaque outline to her profile on the glass. He thought that she wasn’t going to reply. And then, very quietly, she began to speak.

‘I’m not ashamed of where I come from,’ she said.

‘Why should you be?’

‘Just to let you know,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’

‘What is that to do with anything?’

She gave a laboured sigh.

There was no sign of the bus. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Tell me about your brothers,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘To fill in the time. Your mother, then? Your father?’

‘I told you, I don’t know him. He left home before I was born.’

‘You’ve never seen your father at all?’

‘I’ve never seen either of them.’

He looked hard at her. ‘Either of them?’

She smiled crookedly. ‘My brothers have one father, and I’ve got another. Because of mine, theirs left home.’

He worked it out for a moment. ‘Your mother had an affair?’

She laughed softly. ‘My mother met a man, she never asked his name, he was Italian, she fell pregnant …’

‘With you.’

‘With me. On hearing the happy news, her husband left.’

‘Ah …’

Another silence.

‘Ah,’ she finally mimicked. ‘Ah.’ She stretched out her legs, crossed her arms, leaned her head on the headrest. She took a deep breath and began to speak rapidly in her slightly lilting tone. ‘And my brothers, Patrick, Michael, Roy, such awful good boys they are, twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-two, spanking jobs too, mechanic, tool fitter, cast-iron pan company, hoping their mother is long past having sex, as any good God-fearing Catholic woman ought to be, if she ever was on it, which God pray she wasn’t …’ She paused a second, laughing at her own speed and turn of phrase. ‘And then there is Lindsay bawling her head off in the front room, and the kid hasn’t even the grace to look like her mother—Jesus have mercy!—let alone any of the rest of them. The shame! The disgrace! And one day along the street, a woman stops my mother with the pram, and Patrick is along with her, and this woman looks in and she says, “Holy Mary, mother of God, whose child is that?” And my mother gives the pram to Patrick, and “Mine,” she says, and she gives her hat to Patrick, and she bunches her fist, and she lays the woman flat out in Scotland Road.’

By now, Kieran too was laughing.

Lin stopped smiling, bit the side of her lip. ‘My mother is Irish,’ she said. ‘She is not a woman to be crossed.’

‘Are your brothers married?’ Kieran asked.

‘Yes, all married.’

‘Were they, even then?’

‘No, they all lived at home until they were thirty.’ She laughed softly. ‘Genetic programming. Twenty-nine, you give your mam your wages. Thirty, you give your wife your wages. Thirtieth birthday, housing list, engagement party down the club.’

‘They didn’t leave home until their thirties?’

‘My mother wouldn’t let them.’

Kieran, again laughing, shook his head. ‘It must have been quite something, having three older brothers to defend you.’

She looked at him aghast. ‘You think they defended me?’ she asked. ‘They hated me.’

She turned away from him and stared out of the window.

She thought of the street: redbrick terraced houses with a foot of concrete under the window, and a big stone sill. There was a mile of terraces lined up in rows. Named for flowers and First World War battles and prime ministers. Violet Street, Primrose Street, Ypres Street, Perceval Street. Rows of red brick, with a white nameplate high on each end-house wall. Shiny in the rain. Twenty streets on their side of the road, a road that led down to Bootle docks.

‘Roy was the worst,’ she murmured. ‘He was usually left to look after me. He would say that the Social were coming to get me, nobody wanted me, they were throwing me out. He used to say I stank. He used to say I smelled of my father. I had the front bedroom, so I used to run upstairs and look out to see if the people coming to get me were walking down the street. I hid under the bed until it suddenly dawned on me, when I was about twelve, that no one would ever come. And when I told Roy, he said, Nobody will ever come—especially not your dad.’

She turned her head towards him. ‘So you see,’ she said, ‘I’ve lived on another planet to you—and everyone down there in your house.’

In the cold dark silence, Kieran leaned forward and kissed her.

She was strange to the taste: not unpleasant, but dry and cold. Her mouth made no response. He had the sudden and dreadful sensation, as his face touched hers, that he was actually kissing a thin anxious child of ten or twelve. He drew back and saw her eyes fixed on his.

‘Will you look after me?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he heard himself say.

While they had been sitting in the car, the old year had passed.