Chapter 8 Kate 
ALNWICK, ENGLAND | NOVEMBER 2010
Kate wakes suddenly, a long, shrill wail still hanging in the air in front of her.
“Kate,” a soft voice says. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
She scrambles upright, panting. It’s dark. The only light comes from the moon streaming between a crack in the curtains. In the haze of confusion, she squints at the figure at the foot of her bed.
“Audrey? What—?”
Audrey comes closer, tentatively sits on the edge of the bed. “It’s all right. You were having a nightmare.”
Kate hesitates, then collapses onto her shoulder with a sob. Audrey stiffens a little, but holds her with one arm, a little awkwardly, as Kate cries out the leftover fear and shock. She hates the sensations that flood her body after her nightmares—first the fear, then the grief, then the twitch of nerves as the adrenaline dissipates. She hates what it means, what it dredges up for her again.
Every damn time.
Ozzie approaches the side of the bed, ears back, and Audrey gently extricates herself from Kate.
“I tried to reassure him,” she says, “but dogs are such empathetic creatures, aren’t they? We really don’t deserve them.”
“Oh, Oz. I’m sorry. Come here, buddy.”
He leaps up onto the bed, gently nuzzles Kate’s arm. She strokes his fur. Outside, it’s still raining; she can hear it drumming against the roof above them.
“Here, watch your eyes.” Audrey tugs the chain on the bedside lamp. “Things are always far more frightening in the dark.”
“This is so embarrassing. Did I wake you?” Kate asks. Her eyes feel puffy.
“Yes,” Audrey says. “You were quite loud, but I go to bed so late these days, anyway.”
Kate presses a hand against her clammy forehead. “I’m sorry, again. Please, go back to bed. I’m fine.”
Audrey studies her. “You don’t look fine.”
The scene is still flickering behind Kate’s eyes. She’s having difficulty shaking it.
“I was… I was in a really terrible car crash,” she says, her lower lip trembling. “And it’s stuck with me. Obviously.” She waves a hand at her disheveled face, the scars.
Audrey nods with a knowing expression. “I used to have nightmares too. For a long time. After the war. My poor aunt Minna didn’t know what to do for the best. I terrified the guests out of their wits during one particularly dreadful episode, back in my thirties sometime. At any rate,” she continues, “I wasn’t fine. I was reliving some horrible moments. I’d wake up sure it was still happening, and then be devastated that it had already occurred in the past. That I couldn’t change it. I’d scream and thrash like you were. It was dreadful.”
Kate searches Audrey’s eyes, looking for validation that she isn’t mad, or pathetic. “What were you remembering? During yours? Did you… did you lose people? In the war?” She wonders now whether Audrey had ever been married or had children.
Audrey hesitates, but Kate sees the memories, whatever they are, pass across her face, a flitting shadow. “It’s not something I talk about,” she replies. Her white brows knit together. “It was a bad crash, you said?”
Kate presses her tongue against the inside of her teeth. “Yeah. Both my parents were killed.”
There’s genuine concern in the stubborn look that usually pinches the old woman’s thin lips into a tight pucker. “I’m very sorry. And what did that do to you?”
Kate sits, speechless. Any time anyone asked her about the crash, one of her old friends, the doctors, the police… everyone always asked “what happened?” They always wanted to know the how. The factual step-by-step of tragedy.
This happened, then that, and then I was an orphan.
No one ever asked what being the sole survivor had done to her. Not even Adam. Kate had often wondered whether people just couldn’t bear to hear the reality of it, to imagine themselves adrift in that kind of fucked-up, impossible grief. So they didn’t ask.
Now Kate struggles to pin down the answer to Audrey’s question. The words wriggle out of her grasp and a sense of inadequacy settles over her shoulders, the same weight as shame.
“I’m not sure I know the full extent of it yet.”
She realizes, as she speaks, that this is the most honest thing she’s admitted in a long time. To Audrey James, of all people.
Audrey is quiet for a moment. “I know a thing or two about being the survivor, Kate. Some days I doubt whether it really does beat the alternative. But if it’s the hand we’re dealt by chance, then it’s what we must accept.”
Kate’s throat tightens. “Haunts a person though, doesn’t it?”
Audrey doesn’t answer. She has her secrets.
“What do you do with the grief, then?” Kate asks. “Where do you put it, if you don’t talk about it?”
“I don’t entirely understand the question.”
Kate shrugs. “How do you process it?”
Audrey sighs irritably. “No offence intended, my dear, but your generation seems particularly fixated on individual emotion. On processing everything, like you’re an assembly line for feelings. A person could spend their life obsessing over the past. Seems rather exhausting and dramatic to me. In my day, we just got on with it. Kept on keeping on, as they say.”
“But you still had nightmares,” Kate presses. “Do you think you were really getting on with it?” She points to the black notebook on her bedside table. “I write in my journal. It helps to get it out. Have you ever tried that?”
Audrey pushes herself up from the bed with a grunt. “I really don’t see the point of that. The past is the past. There’s no changing it. And it’s a fool’s errand to pretend we can. Now get some sleep.”
She stumbles a little on the rug but steadies herself, makes her way toward the door.
“Can you leave it open?” Kate asks, feeling childish the moment she says it.
Audrey glances over her shoulder, nods. “Of course. I don’t much like closed doors either.”
When Kate rises later that morning, the rain has stopped and the landscape outside her window is green and fresh. Maybe she’ll go for a run, figure out a route around the inn and the town, but first she needs a hot shower to wake her up. She didn’t sleep much after her conversation with Audrey, her curiosity piqued by the woman’s vague answers. What were her nightmares about? What has she survived? Rubbing her tired eyes, Kate staggers to the bathroom.
Once she’s clean and dressed, she calls for Ozzie, who is still dozing at the end of the bed. But as they round the corner toward the stairs, she stops in her tracks.
“Oh shit.”
Water drips in a steady rhythm from the ceiling, and the runner beneath it is drenched. Kate darts back into her room for the bin under the sink, then places it beneath the leak and hurries downstairs, Ozzie at her heels, keen for his breakfast.
She finds Audrey in the dining room, poring over that morning’s newspaper with a steaming coffee and a large seven-day pill case. She pours a small pile of multicoloured tablets into her hand before knocking them back with a wince.
“We’ve got a problem,” Kate tells her, taking in the pill case. Her grandmother used to use one of those. She’d been on about eight different medications in her last years. “The ceiling is leaking in the corridor upstairs.”
Audrey sets the paper down on the table with a crackle of newsprint and an aggrieved sigh. “Where?”
“Right outside the Oak Room. I used a bin to catch it for now, but the rug is soaked. Shall I call a handyman for you?”
“No, no, I’ll deal with it. You have your breakfast.” Audrey heaves herself up from the table. She’s using her cane today.
“Are you sure?”
Kate feels torn—shouldn’t this be something she should handle? Isn’t that why she’s here? She watches Audrey’s gnarled hand grip her cane and thinks back to what she said about having lost so many people. Maybe keeping on really is the only way she knows to cope.
“Yes, eat,” Audrey says. “One should never starve when there’s perfectly good food to be had. Save your restraint for times of scarcity, I say. I’ll ring Ian.”
“Who’s Ian?” Kate asks, but Audrey is already walking away.
An hour later, Kate is back up on the third floor. Audrey had forgotten a doctor’s appointment scheduled for nine o’clock. She called Sue for a ride into town, and left Kate to sort out the leak with Ian the handyman.
“When did it start?” he asks her from his perch on the stepladder.
He isn’t what Kate expected. He’s probably a couple of years older than her, with slightly untidy brown hair and black-framed glasses. He arrived in khakis and a cable cardigan, altogether looking far more like an analyst or librarian than a labourer.
“Not sure exactly,” Kate says. “Ozzie, come here.” Her dog has been repeatedly scooting over to the base of the stepladder to sniff at Ian. “I came out this morning around half seven and found the drip. The rug was already soaked, so I reckon maybe sometime in the early hours?”
“Yeah, we got a real clobbering with that rain last night,” Ian says. “I’m not surprised. This old place is full of holes I keep patching.”
Kate seizes the prompt to address her curiosity. “So, do you have your own business, or…?”
He chuckles, a soft bark of a laugh. “No, I work at the bookshop in town.”
Kate isn’t sure if this information makes her more or less confused. He steps down off the ladder, and before Kate can grab Ozzie, he darts over for a scratch, which Ian enthusiastically delivers.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asks. “Doing this?”
“Well, my granddad dated, courted—I don’t know what they called it then—Audrey in the fifties, after they both came back from the war. For whatever reason, they didn’t marry, but they stayed friends. After my gran died, Audrey was really there for my granddad until he passed himself, a couple years ago, now. Anyway…” he says, waving a hand through the air as though dispelling the details like a cloud of gnats. “Point is, Audrey never had kids of her own, and she sort of took a shine to me. I’m good with my hands so I help out here when things need doing around the hotel…”
Kate nods as he continues speaking, but she’s only half-listening, fixating on his mention of the war. “Did you say your granddad and Audrey met when they both got back from the war?”
“Yeah.”
“Was she one of those women who built aeroplanes or something? She hasn’t really said. I’d kind of assumed she was on the home front.”
“No. I think she was over there. Not sure what she did though. I’ve only ever heard her mention it once, maybe twice. I don’t think Granddad ever knew much either.” Ian gives Ozzie another scratch, then points at the ceiling. “I need to get up on the roof and have a look. I’ll be outside for a bit if you need me.” He picks up his tool case and steps past Kate with a gentlemanly nod reminiscent of a bygone era.
“Are you going to be okay up there? It’s freezing outside.”
“I don’t mind it. You get well accustomed to this sort of weather here in the north. Bit different from London, I expect.”
Kate’s never understood people who like the cold. She prefers running on a treadmill indoors instead of out, and she’d happily hibernate under a pile of blankets with a hot drink all winter if it weren’t so socially and financially problematic.
“It is,” she says, “but that’s not a bad thing.”
“Good,” Ian says, flashing her a warm smile. “I’ve always loved it here. Small-town lad at heart.”
She nods. “Do you know if there’s a decent fitness centre in town?”
“Yeah, a couple. I can give you the names before I leave.”
“Thanks.”
Half an hour later, Kate is in the sitting room when she hears the front door open. After struggling with the fireplace for a while, she finally got it burning, but the log is smoking more than it should be. She cranes her head around the side of the wing chair to find Ian brushing his boots on the doormat. His cheeks are ruddy and the rush of fresh air he brings in smells like mud and something green.
“I’ve mostly got it,” he says. “I patched some new shingles over the hole, but I think we might still have to replace part of the ceiling. We’ll see how well it dries out. Don’t want to get any rot though, ’cause then we’ll have an even bigger problem. This place is an old pig of a thing, honestly. I’ve told Audrey for about two years now that the roof really needs replacing, but she’s stubborn.” His tone is affectionate, fondness permeating his frustration, and Kate smothers a laugh.
“Yeah, I gathered that.” She rises from her chair. “Anyway, thanks for doing this. What’s the process for settling up? Do I pay you now, or do you invoice us, or…?”
Ian shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Audrey and I have it all sorted.”
Kate lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. She’ll follow up with Audrey once she’s back from the doctor.
“Well, the least I can do is offer you a coffee. I’ve just made a pot. Audrey should be home in a little while. From what you’ve said, I’m sure she’d be happy to see you.”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
“How do you take it?”
“Milk, no sugar.”
Kate disappears into the kitchen to fetch the drinks, and returns to find Ian kneeling beside the fire, which is no longer smoking.
“How’d you do that?” Kate asks.
Ian’s expression is that of a kid caught out in something. “Oh, did you build the fire? You had the logs all piled up, is all.” He points to the triangular arrangement that’s now crackling in the grate. “You need to give the flames some space to breathe. Don’t worry, it’s a common mistake.”
“Can you tell I wasn’t a Girl Guide?” she asks wryly, passing him the mug.
He nods his thanks, and they each take a sip.
“I doubt Audrey will be much longer,” Kate says after a moment of silence.
“I don’t mind waiting,” Ian says pleasantly, then strolls over to the library, settles himself onto the piano bench. The grey autumn light from the window is weak, and Ian reaches up to switch on the small lamp on top of the piano.
“Do you play?” he asks.
“No, but my dad did.”
Kate remembers the sound of it drifting upstairs to her room on weekend mornings. She’d hated it as a teenager, when she wanted to enjoy a lie-in, and now would give almost anything to hear him play again. Life is so full of extremes. How often that happens, that you end up yearning in ironic desperation for the very thing that once irritated, exhausted, or overwhelmed you.
“One of the ways Audrey repays me is by letting me tinker on this little beauty whenever I’m here.”
“I’ve never seen one this colour,” Kate says, blinking away the memory of her dad. “Is it rare?”
Ian pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. It’s one of Audrey’s most prized possessions.” He pauses, then starts to play a few bars.
Kate leans against the archway between the rooms, the aroma of the coffee in her hand mixing with the woodsmoke in the fireplace. The melody is bright and simple, yet sentimental. It stirs something in her, something melancholy.
The front door opens, jarring her back to the present. Sue and Audrey have returned. Ian stops playing and heads toward the foyer.
“That was lovely,” Kate says, following him.
“Thanks, but it’s not mine.”
She’s about to ask what it’s called when they reach the lobby.
“Bloody freezing,” Audrey mutters as Sue shuts the door against the damp wind. She spots Kate’s coffee. “Is there a pot on?”
“Yeah. Still hot.”
“Brilliant. Thank you for the ride, Sue,” Audrey says, setting her cane in the umbrella stand near the door.
“Of course, deary,” Sue says, but her face is drawn. “Take care o’ yerself, naow. Let me know what you need.” She pulls Audrey into a hug, whispers something Kate can’t hear. “Ian, nice to see you. Kate.” She nods, her lips in a thin line, then leaves.
Kate exchanges a look with Ian, who appears curious but unconcerned. “Is everything okay?” Ian ventures.
Audrey straightens. “Nothing a good strong cup of coffee can’t fix.”
“Why don’t you come and warm yourself by the fire Kate’s got going?” Ian says, offering his arm, which Audrey takes. A bittersweet longing tugs in Kate’s chest as she watches Audrey lean into Ian, like a tree bowing to stop itself breaking in the wind.
Kate fetches Audrey’s coffee and returns to find the two of them in conversation by the fire. Ian is telling some sort of amusing story about a customer at the bookshop. Kate sets Audrey’s mug down on the table and steps back to leave them to their chat. There’s washing-up to be done in the kitchen, anyway.
“Hold it, there, dear.” Audrey stays her hand. “I understand you and Ian have sorted the roof?”
“Yeah, we did,” she says, looking at Ian, who smiles and takes a pointed gulp of his coffee. “Oh, but it might need replacing full-on, very soon.”
Audrey shoots Ian a good-natured glare. “Got her campaigning for you now, have you?”
Ian raises a hand in mock defense. “The more people convincing you, the better. It’s a disaster up there. You won’t make it through another year without massive leaks, Audrey.”
She scoffs. “God help me now if the pair of you are in cahoots.”
There’s a beat of silence before Ian glances at the clock. “I should be off,” he says. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Kate. Audrey,” he adds, “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”
Audrey grasps Ian’s outstretched hand, a broad smile on her face that, until now, Kate didn’t think she was capable of. It’s the first true warmth she’s seen from the woman, and it fills her with more questions about Ian. “I heard you playing when I came in. Do me a favour and tickle the ivories once more before you leave?”
“Of course.”
Kate returns to the kitchen and Ian strikes up another tune, different than the last piece. Debussy or Ravel, maybe. As the notes drift through the house, Kate fills the sink with hot water and soap, begins to clean the dishes from breakfast.
Orange-scented steam warms her face as her thoughts wander back to Audrey. So, she was on the continent during the war, according to Ian, but doing what? Her mind assembles the details she’s observed about the woman, trying to fit the pieces together. There’s that collection of German books in the library. Was Audrey in Germany, of all places? Had she lived there? Her aunt owned the Oakwood before her, so Kate had just assumed Audrey was English. But it could explain the strange lilt in her accent.
Her thoughts shift to Ian. He clearly brightens Audrey like no one else does, and the tenderness between them reminds Kate a bit of her own parents’ relationship, or the way it was with her and Adam in the beginning.
She scrubs aggressively at some caked-on grease as she pokes around her feelings. She thinks of the Marmite jar, the dropped egg, Audrey’s cane and medication. Audrey does need help, that much is clear. And maybe Ian needs Audrey too—he seems genuinely pleased to be here. Everyone wants to be needed in some way, including Kate, she admits. She’s felt adrift in her own life. Perhaps Audrey and the Oakwood could be her anchor, some direction, as unexpected as that may be.
She scans the kitchen for more dishes, then returns to the sitting room to collect the coffee mugs. The piano has stopped, and Ian is gone, but Audrey is staring into the fire, her eyes glassy.
“Are you done there, Audrey?” Kate asks gently, feeling certain she’s interrupted some deep thought.
Audrey blinks up at her. “Oh, yes, thank you.”
Kate scoops up Audrey’s mug and looks for Ian’s, spotting it on top of the piano. She retrieves it, then does a double take at the sight of a water ring on the surface.
“Oh, goddamnit,” she mutters, using the sleeve of her cardigan to try to wipe away the white mark. It doesn’t budge.
“What’s that?” Audrey asks from the next room.
Old as she may be, her hearing is clearly still perfect.
“It’s just, er…” Kate continues to scrub ineffectually.
“What?”
“There’s a water ring on the piano.” No matter how she says this, it’s going to come out like an accusation. “Where Ian set his mug. I’m sorry. I can look up how to shift it, I’ll see what I can do. Or maybe Sue—”
“That wasn’t Ian’s cup,” Audrey interrupts her. “Don’t worry. It’s been there for decades.”
“I really think it was though, Audrey. I’m sorry. It’s right where—”
“I said don’t fret about it. Ian didn’t leave that water ring.” She turns in her chair, fixing her eyes on Kate’s. “A Nazi bastard did.”
Kate freezes at Audrey’s pronouncement. “Pardon?”
Audrey gestures to the armchair across from her. “Come and sit.”
“Ian said you were in the war,” Kate says, sitting down. “Is that where your nightmares come from? Things you saw?” She wonders for a moment if she’s being too bold, too intrusive. But Audrey nods.
“Yes.”
“And the mark on the piano was left by a Nazi?”
“It was. In Berlin.”
Audrey’s hand grips the arm of her chair, the misshapen knuckles protruding. A log pops in the fireplace.
“I’d love to hear it,” Kate says, “if you’re willing.”
“I haven’t been willing. Not really. But now…” She trails off, staring into the depths of the fire as though trying to retrieve something long lost to the ashes of time.
Nearly a full minute passes, and Kate starts to wonder whether she’s going to say anything more at all. Finally, Audrey shakes her head.
“Truth be told, I’m unsure where to start. Or what good it will do, really.”
Kate considers her response. “I felt a lot better after I talked to you last night,” she says. “What you said about being the survivor. What that does to you.” She clears her throat to dislodge the stuck memories. “If you’ve never really talked about it, how do you know it won’t do any good?”
Audrey pierces her with a look that’s both vulnerable and resentful. “No one other than you has ever asked me to talk about it.”
Kate frowns. “What about Ian’s grandfather? Or Ian?”
“Ian told you about that?”
“Yes.”
“I think…” Audrey turns to the fire again. “When everyone came back from the war—when the survivors came back, I mean—no one wanted to talk about it. And no one wanted to ask. There was this gaping chasm between the people who had seen the war and those who hadn’t. The horrors aren’t articulable, Kate. They’ve made films and things, of course, depicting it. But being there is—was—something very different. Ian’s grandfather didn’t want to talk about it, and neither did I. We made a go of it, tried to find comfort in one another’s company. But it was a very”—she casts around for the words—“isolating experience. It was enough to drive a person mad. And it did for many. I think my auntie thought me mad at times. And I couldn’t tell her any of it. I wanted to move on, have a fresh start here.”
Kate picks at a ragged cuticle. “Like me.”
Audrey nods. “I assure you I’m as surprised as you will be to hear this, but I hadn’t really recognized myself in anyone until now. Until you.”
She glances over at the library, the piano, and a sad smile pulls at her lips. “It all started with Ilse,” she says. “She was everything to me. Absolutely everything.”