The new tradition had it that when the car went through the cutting in the Chiltern Hills, where the chalk walls rise off the road like the parting of the Red Sea, the front-seat passenger would retune the radio. As Oxfordshire opened up in front of us, we lost reception of the London station. That night Rachel was with us. Her car was in for a service and Greg was working late. He had arranged to come up with Lucas and Danny, who were already bringing the first load of their stuff. Michael wouldn’t be coming at all; he had phoned that morning to say that he had a deal going through and was going to be in the office all weekend. It was the Friday-night request show on the Oxfordshire station and the caller asked for something by REM.
The DJ put on ‘Losing My Religion’. I spent my customary two seconds wondering why they always chose that song when REM had so many other good ones, then fell under its melancholy spell.
Martha tapped out the rhythm on the knee of her jeans. She began to sing and Rachel and I joined in. We turned off the M40 and into the countryside on the song’s beautiful dying notes. There was a second’s pause out of respect for it before the DJ took the next caller.
This part of the journey, like a labyrinth the first times I had driven it, was becoming familiar. The car threaded its way through the lanes to Stoneborough as if it were on automatic pilot. To our right, ten miles north, the lights of Oxford burnt the bellies of the clouds orange but where we were, everything outside the beam of the headlights was a rich soot. Only here and there did a cluster of lights shine out across the fields. I turned the radio off as we came into the village. The houses lining the road were silent and even though it was just nine o’clock, so few lights showed I was afraid we would wake everyone up as we passed by in our bubble of noise.
Since we would be the first to arrive, Lucas had given me the keys. The Manor, when we pulled up outside, looked sullen. Its unlit windows glowered in the gleam from the cuticle of moon, resentful of having been ignored for so long. The stone mass of it was bulked up against the wood behind like a dog with raised hackles and I had a premonition of the unease I was coming to associate with the place. Now, though, the feeling was tinged with a resentment of my own: the house was taking Lucas from me.
‘Spooky old joint in the dark, isn’t it?’ said Martha, from the back seat.
‘Yeah, but amazing,’ said Rachel. ‘I can hardly believe it, even now. How many people get the chance to spend time somewhere like this? It’s like something out of a film.’
The key turned with a clunk and the front door swung open. I ran my hand along the wall until I found the switch. The alarm was loud and discordant and it was a relief when it accepted the code Lucas had given me and fell silent. We dumped our bags and went around putting lights on, our footsteps echoing up through the house. There was a strong scent of polish. Patrick had had a cleaning lady who lived in the village and Lucas had arranged to keep her on. Though we did our washing-up at the weekends and tidied up any real mess, the dusting, hoovering and changing the beds was left to her. She came in the week and left the house ready for our arrival on Fridays. I was glad she didn’t come while we were there: I found it embarrassing to have someone cleaning up after me. My mother had never had a domestic help and the idea that someone else should do my housework made me uncomfortable. Even at university, when the scout came to empty the bin and wash the handbasin in my room, I had always tried to be out.
Returning to the hall now, I stood still for a moment and raised my eyes to the ceiling, the focal point of that enormous space. Tonight there seemed an obliquity in the expression of the dark man on the chaise longue, as if he were concealing something in the rich folds of his clothing. There was urgency now, too, in the way that the Ganymede character held out his wine bowl, the muscles straining under his golden skin with the effort of proffering it. Every time I looked at the painting I noticed something different. It was as if the characters in it lived and breathed whenever my back was turned and never quite managed to find their original positions when I looked at them again.
‘I’m going to light the fire,’ Martha called out. I followed her voice into the drawing room, where she was kneeling on the rug. She used the kindling from the fire basket and made balls of old newspaper to stuff around it. When the flames began to catch, she put on small pieces of coal, which soon established a heart. I went around the room switching the table lamps on and dragging the heavy curtains closed.
Martha stood back and brushed off her hands. ‘I could do with a glass of wine now.’ There was none in the drawing room or library and none in the fridge. ‘We’re going to have to go down to the cellar,’ she said.
The three of us stood outside the white door that led off the kitchen. I reached up and took the key off the hook. The door opened inwards and we saw the grey stone steps falling away into the darkness. Nothing would have persuaded me down them. I thought of the house’s atmosphere pooling down there, collecting in the deepest part. The idea made me feel suffocated, as if I were already breathing claggy, poisoned air. I fought an instinct to slam the door shut.
‘Look,’ said Rachel. ‘Why don’t you go down and choose some – you know more about it than I do – and I’ll turn the oven on for the pizzas.’
‘I can’t believe you’re scared of the cellar,’ I said.
‘I’m just no good at choosing wine.’
‘This isn’t an off-licence. Every bottle down there is good.’
‘I don’t see you hurrying.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Martha, starting down the steps. At the bottom she turned left and disappeared from sight. Rachel and I unpacked the salad and turned on the oven so that we could heat the pizzas as soon as the others arrived. After two or three minutes we heard footsteps again and Martha reappeared with a couple of dusty bottles. She put them on the table and scrabbled through the drawer for the corkscrew. ‘It’s amazing down there,’ she said. ‘It’s just rack after rack after rack. These two are quite modest compared with some I could have chosen. It must be worth a fortune.’
‘Perhaps I’ll get Lucas to show me one day,’ I said, locking the door firmly.
Things felt better when we were sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine. I asked Rachel about her shop, a boutique in Richmond from which she sold exquisite accessories. I was fascinated by it and went there often, even though I couldn’t afford to buy anything.
‘Things are good.’ She straightened the tassels on the hearth rug, running her nails through them to untangle the threads. ‘Vogue did a piece on one of our handbag designers in the latest issue and we got a plug. It’s brought a lot of people in.’
Martha poked at the fire, trying to coax more heat from it. ‘I still can’t get over this place,’ she said. ‘Open fires – I love them.’
‘How do you feel about Lucas moving up here, Jo?’ asked Rachel.
I shifted position to ease the pins and needles in my calves. ‘I’m worried about it. Not so much Lucas but Danny. They won’t work up here. He’ll just sponge off Lucas and distract him when he’s writing, if he lets him write at all. You know Danny – he’s hardly motivated.’
‘Not to work anyway,’ she said.
‘And now he’s lost his job, that’s the only real structure in his life gone.’
‘There’s nothing you can do about it, Jo,’ said Martha, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and drawing her legs up under her. ‘You’ll have to sit it out. If you ask me, Lucas feels guilty about having all this money, and sharing the wealth makes him feel better.’
‘Look at these weekends,’ said Rachel. ‘He won’t let any of us give him a penny.’ It was true: we had tried to pay our way but Lucas wouldn’t have it.
Through the curtains we saw headlights pan across the front of the house and there was an exuberant blast on the horn. We went out to meet them, leaving the front door open to light the path. I felt apprehensive about seeing Lucas. I hadn’t seen him since the morning after our argument. I stood awkwardly on the gravel, waiting for him to open the door.
‘Sorry we’re late. Took ages to load up the car,’ he said, getting out and giving me a formal-feeling hug, as if he were aware of new boundaries that would have to be negotiated before the old status quo could be resumed.
‘Give me the keys, mate. Let’s get some of this unpacked.’ Danny opened up the boot, which threatened to spill its load of bags and boxes on to the drive. ‘Here you are, Jo. One for you.’ He held out a cardboard box. It was large and heavy. As he looked at me, making sure I had it, I saw the unmistakable light of triumph in his eyes. And he knew I’d seen it. A little smile, perceptible only to me, played around his mouth.
He withdrew his hands from the underneath of the box very slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. I turned away, disgusted both with him and with myself, for giving myself away.
It wasn’t spring yet but there were signs that the end of winter was coming. In the flowerbeds around the base of the house and in the grass verges of the drive, the snowdrops had gone and now crocuses had pushed their way through the hard earth. The rain and intense cold of the week was gone by Sunday and a flat blue sky stretched over the house, the sun behind infusing it with a blank light like a cloudless summer day’s. There was something dishonest about it. With the wind and cold during the week one knew where one was, but that sky promised a warmth it didn’t deliver.
Martha found me in my room on Sunday morning, brushing my hair. I shared Lucas’s bed along the landing and now only used my original room for dressing and storing clothes. I looked up from the mirror as she came in.
‘Danny’s driving me mad,’ I said, waving the brush. ‘He’s been swanning about all weekend, talking about what they’re going to do up here when it’s just the two of them.’
‘Don’t show him you’re angry, for God’s sake. It’ll make things worse.’ She sat down on the end of the bed and bounced a little. ‘It’s harmless anyway – he’s just enjoying winding you up.’
‘Easier said than done. And I don’t think it is harmless.’
‘Jo.’ She stopped bouncing and looked at me seriously. ‘You’ve got to let this go. You can’t let Danny come between you and Lucas. Lucas is just helping Danny out for a while and it’s really kind of him. Let him do it.’
‘I don’t know, Marth …’ I decided to tell her what Lucas had said about my leaving my job. That, too, had been playing on my mind. ‘It is Danny but it isn’t just that …’
There was a knock at the door and Lucas came in, fresh from the shower. He was rubbing his head with a towel and his hair stood up from his head in black spikes. He had another towel tied round his waist and I watched Martha take in the lines of his body, looking at his image in the mirror. I caught her eye in the glass and she smiled and looked away. The line of dark hairs that ran down from his navel and under the towel curled damply. He bent slightly to kiss me behind the ear. ‘You were up early again.’
‘So, gorgeous, what’s the plan?’ said Martha, as he joined her on the end of the bed.
‘I’d just come to talk to you about that. Danny’s been going on about Elizabeth, you know, Patrick’s old girlfriend, the one we saw in the film. I’ve invited her for lunch; it seemed like the best way to shut him up.’
Had anyone else been responsible for her invitation to lunch, I would have been enthusiastic. I was intrigued as much as Danny clearly was. I wanted to see what she was like now, this beauty who had captivated Patrick. But Danny’s involvement tarnished it for me. When Lucas turned away I looked at Martha and rolled my eyes. She pulled a mock-exasperated face but I knew that at least some of her exasperation with me was real.
Given what we knew, Elizabeth had to be fifty at least. It was hard to credit. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me she was thirty-eight or thirty-nine. She held herself with the sort of still power I imagined a life of posing must imbue. She was a temple goddess come to life, her skin almost unlined and her feline eyes subtly accentuated with dark shadow. She was wearing a black cashmere top and fine wool trousers that dropped in a long line to the floor, but I still had a mental image of the sharp white trouser suit she was wearing in the photograph. Her shiny chestnut hair, even now showing only a whisper of grey, was tied in a loose knot at the nape of her neck.
Lucas stepped forward to greet her properly, kissing her respectfully on each cheek. ‘Darling,’ she said, holding his elbows tightly.
‘Elizabeth, this is my girlfriend, Joanna.’ Lucas took my hand and pulled me towards him a little.
‘Good to meet you,’ she said in a crisp home-counties accent that took me by surprise. I had been expecting something exotic or at least a mid-Atlantic drawl. She scanned me quickly up and down. Lucas introduced the others and she nodded and murmured. Greg held out his hand and she shook it, displaying long manicured fingers and a silver ring set with a large sea-green stone. She looked at him appraisingly and held the handshake a second longer.
‘Shall we have a drink before lunch?’ said Lucas. He ushered us into the drawing room and seated Elizabeth on the chesterfield. She crossed her legs, pressed her ankles together, and waited beautifully for her drink. I heard the ice crack as Lucas poured the gin.
‘You haven’t changed anything?’ she asked, looking around.
We’d done a reasonable job of cleaning up after the night before. In a fit of zeal I’d even polished the furniture and the scent of beeswax vied with that of smoke from the new fire that was now crackling merrily.
‘It reminds me of him, keeping it the same.’
‘He had wonderful taste, didn’t he?’ She sighed. ‘I miss him so much.’
Lucas smiled sadly and handed her the glass. ‘Elizabeth, will you excuse me for a few minutes? I’m going to go and finish getting lunch ready.’ He was doing a good job of staying calm. She had been forty minutes late and he had been pacing in the kitchen when she arrived, worried that the food would be ruined. He had had to turn the oven off and was keeping everything warm as best he could.
‘Of course, darling. Is there anything I can do?’ The question was asked with an intonation that let it be known that the answer would be no.
‘Not at all. I’ll call you through in just a minute.’ He pulled the door shut behind him. As he did so I indicated an offer of help but he shook his head.
We sat in silence for a second or two. Elizabeth reached into her bag and produced a cigarette case. Danny jumped up from the other sofa to offer her a light.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling up at him from under lowered eyelashes and exhaling. ‘Tell me, how are you enjoying the house?’
‘It’s wonderful, so peaceful after a week in London,’ said Martha.
‘We always thought it was paradise. We used to pile into the cars and come up at the first opportunity. The first summer we spent here was one of the best of my life.’ Somehow I couldn’t picture Elizabeth piling into anything: I saw her instead in Patrick’s Jaguar, sunglasses on and a headscarf streaming behind her as they zipped through the lanes with the roof down. I wondered if that summer was the one they got together.
‘I can’t wait till summer.’ Rachel looked out over the lawn from her position on the window-seat. ‘We’ll be able to sunbathe without being spied on.’
‘I envy you all,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So young. You have it all still in front of you.’
‘You’re not trying to tell us you’re old?’ Danny looked genuinely horrified.
She laughed him off with a modest expression that left me in no doubt she expected the compliment as her due.
Lucas called down the hall that lunch was ready. Greg stood and offered Elizabeth his arm. She took it and he walked her gently through to the dining room as if she herself were a work of art.
‘Look at them all,’ Rachel said in a low voice, walking behind with Martha and me. ‘Do they realise she’s old enough to be their mother?’
‘Darling, I was just saying how much this reminds me of the time I spent here with your parents and Patrick and all our friends. It’s like someone’s rewound the tape – you could be us.’ She declined with a wave the spoon of potatoes that Martha proffered. Danny refilled her glass and was rewarded with a cattish smile.
‘We’re not half as glamorous, I’m afraid,’ Lucas replied, carving the lamb. He had prepared a huge roast, unable as usual to keep to the modest lunch he said he’d had in mind.
‘Nonsense. And you’re a much better cook than Patrick ever was. Your poor mother was left to handle that side of things in our day,’ she said. That I believed: I couldn’t imagine the woman in front of me ever stooping to vegetable preparation.
There was silence as we ate, punctuated occasionally by a remark about how cold the weather had been or a compliment to Lucas on the food. I was hungry all of a sudden and helped myself to another slice of meat.
‘Take my advice and make sure you marry him, Jo,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Men who can cook are a rare breed. You have to grab one while the going’s good.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ I replied. ‘But I haven’t tested his ironing skills yet.’
‘You wish.’ Lucas looked sceptical.
As lunch went on, I watched the sun withdraw from the garden. The shadow that, when we started eating, had lain only on that part of it which was in the lee of the house spread like spilled ink across the lawn and drive. Greg opened more wine but I switched to water, conscious that I had to drive back to London in a couple of hours. Lucas produced a treacle sponge pudding and Elizabeth looked visibly shocked that people could countenance eating such a thing. In my amusement I asked for a large slice. Danny was watching her intently, as if comparing the present version with the one he’d seen in the film.
‘Do you have any children, Elizabeth?’ asked Martha.
She turned and smiled serenely, as if giving an interview for television. ‘A daughter. Diana. She’s travelling in Africa. In fact, she’s in South Africa at the moment, staying with Jonathan. You remember him, Lucas, the photographer?’ He shook his head blankly. ‘Another one of our friends from that time.’
‘Where in South Africa is she?’ asked Greg. ‘I was in Johannesburg just before Christmas.’
‘Really? How interesting.’ She refocused her attention on him, her eyes wide. ‘Were you on holiday or working there?’
‘Working. I was setting up a computer system.’
‘God, Greg,’ said Rachel, laughing. ‘Why do you insist on making your job sound so dull? He designed a system for an international diamond-mining firm,’ she explained. ‘It was a really prestigious contract.’
That interested me. I knew, of course, that he worked in computers but hadn’t realised at what sort of level. Rachel pulled her chair closer to Greg’s and stroked his hair. He let her for a few seconds then gently inclined his head away, obviously annoyed by her comment.
Elizabeth stirred her coffee languorously, the spoon chiming against the edge of the cup. ‘Diana’s in Cape Town. She isn’t working, just seeing the country. God knows what she’ll do when she gets back.’
‘I haven’t seen Diana for years,’ said Lucas. ‘Not since she was eight.’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘Is that right? Eight? What a good memory you have.’
‘She has always been something of a force, I suppose.’
‘No. I mean, it was the day my father had his accident.’
There was a moment’s shocked silence from the others but I’d known that detail; Lucas had told me earlier in the day. Then Elizabeth reached for his hand over the table and gave his fingers a tight squeeze. The green stone flashed.
‘I’d like to see her again.’
‘You will. She’ll be back in the summer. She’d love to see you, I’m sure.’
Lucas smiled. ‘Actually, I expect that you and I will be seeing a bit more of each other in the meantime anyway. I meant to tell you.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘Well, I’m going to be here full time. I’m going to do the same as Diana and use some of Patrick’s money to take time off. Danny and I are going to move up from London and live at the house for a few months. To “pursue our creative projects”.’
‘Creative projects?’
‘I’ve always meant to write a novel …’
‘Oh Lucas, how brilliant.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘You must both come to dinner with me.’ She raised her glass to them. ‘Oh well done, you. Patrick would be so proud.’
‘Actually,’ said Danny, ‘if you don’t think it’s too much of an imposition, Elizabeth, I’d love to talk to you about your career sometime. Lucas tells me that you worked in film, as well as modelling. Film’s my area – I’d be fascinated to hear about your experiences. Perhaps I could take you out to lunch?’
She gleamed then like newly polished silver. ‘Of course. It would be an absolute pleasure.’