10

 

 

GWYNN RODE IN the cab of the truck with a guitar case between her knees.

“Gig?” she managed at last.

The Compass was down by the water; when they eased the truck off the road, the lot was nearly full.

“Pig Iron,” was all Colin said.

She was still shaky as she slid out of the cab, but he took the guitar case from her, and held her by the arm. Inside, the pub was warm and noisy; at the far end, three men were setting up on a small stage.

“Pat, Mike, Davy.” Colin nodded at each by way of introduction. “Gwynn.”

“You’re late,” the man named Davy said. He wore a watch cap over his grey hair, and had an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. He held out a hand to Gwynn. “Pleased.”

“Held up,” Colin said, setting down the guitar case and grabbing a loop of cord.

“Can see that.” Davy laughed, and Mike grunted. Pat barely looked up.

“Get yourself a pint,” Colin suggested. “I’ve got to help here.”

 

AT FIRST GWYNN didn’t recognize any of the songs Pig Iron played; seated at a small table in the corner, nursing her pint of Swift One, she found she was barely paying attention anyway, and she felt vaguely guilty about that. She looked up as they launched into a cover of “Lullaby of London.” They were, she thought, pretty good.

What had happened out there at the dovecote? Gwynn wished she knew. She might have been able to convince herself she had imagined the entire thing, but for the fact that Colin had been there with her. He had felt it. Or at least, he had felt something. And he had seen her reaction. She felt again his hand on her arm, and looked down. She looked up at the stage once more, and he was watching her, his hands moving between chords as though with a mind of their own.

He had warned her. He’d warned her on the phone, and again before he’d pried the latch of the gate and dragged it open. His words hung with her: we might not get it closed again. Nothing had been out there, save the building, slowly falling to ruins in its tiny clearing. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been—this. Maybe to have her curiosity satisfied, that was all. To be able to turn to Colin and say, “Oh, a dovecote. I’d heard there was one out here,” and then to return to the cottage. All done. Yet despite there being nothing out there—there had been something.

Now the gate was open.

When they’d returned to the garden, Colin had put all his weight against the gate and shoved it back into its place in the wall, where, the hinges buckled, it no longer fit. The latch destroyed, there was no way to lock it back up again.

Gwynn wished there was.

She wished she hadn’t urged him forward.

And where were the doves?

 

SHE FOUND AN answer in the final song of the second set. Pat stepped forward to the mic, Pat, who, she had noticed, had remained as far in the background as one could get on such a small stage, with his bass guitar. His voice, when he sang, was a high tenor, lighter and higher than Davy’s had been—Davy, who, looking sulky now, had picked up a melodeon.

 

O, don’t you see that lonesome dove

That flies from vine to vine

He’s mournin’ for his own true love

Like I will mourn for mine

Like I will mourn for mine, my love

Believe me what I say

You are th’ darling of my heart

Until my dying day.

 

The song, despite the beauty of Pat’s rendition, called up goose bumps on her arms. Gwynn looked up, and found, once again, Colin watching her.

 

WHEN THEY RETURNED to the cottage, well after midnight, Colin seemed uncomfortable. Wary. Gwynn let him go inside first, let him look into every room.

“I’ll be fine,” she said when he returned to the entryway.

He looked unconvinced. “I don’t like this house.”He had his hands shoved into his coat pockets.

“Really.” Gwynn wished she could convince herself. She opened the door for him and stood aside. Suddenly she felt the truth of the matter. “The house is just sad. It’s the dovecote that’s—angry. I’ll be fine.”

 

UPSTAIRS, IN THE bed which had been her great-aunt’s, she found herself wondering what it would be like to sleep with Colin Moore.

The thought was strangely upsetting.

She hadn’t slept with anyone since Richard, and he’d been dead these past six years. Celibate six years. That in itself was unnerving.

Not, perhaps, as unnerving as the idea of that other Gwynn, widowed young—how young?—and who had lived on for fifty or sixty more years, sleeping alone in this bed. Perhaps her great-aunt had taken a lover at some point—she didn’t have to be alone just because she was widowed. Somehow, though—just somehow—Gwynn knew she hadn’t done that.

Suddenly Gwynn was terrified. What if that happened to her? What if she spent the rest of her life repeating the history of her great-aunt? Widowed young, no children, always alone. Until she died, unhappy, friendless.

In the darkness she clenched her eyes shut, trying to envision Colin Moore. Just his face, the steady gray eyes, the dark hair going to gray at the temples. But the image swam away from her mind’s eye, and she was left with nothing but emptiness.

Damn you, Richard, she thought. Damn you for doing this to me.