The Move

by Felicity Everett

  6

  ‘So next time,’ Nick slapped me between the shoulder blades in comradely fashion, ‘she’s going to tell me before she heads off into the wide blue yonder, aren’t you, my little vagabond?’

  I laughed awkwardly and scuffed a stone along the footpath.

  ‘I should’ve thought one could go for a stroll in broad daylight without prompting a house-to-house search,’ said Cath drily.

  ‘Yeah fair play, I probably overreacted,’ Nick admitted. ‘But we’re new round here, and she’s got form…’

  I cast Nick a hurt sideways glance.

  The Fleece was in sight now, and I was feeling apprehensive. Nick and I were not really pub quiz types, but Ray and Min had invited us and the other team members were the Gaineses and Cath, so to turn it down would have seemed rude. Here was a chance, anyway, to prove that I was more than the hopeless klutz who had dropped Imogen’s chutney and knocked Cath for six. Here was a chance to get to know our neighbours better and get a feel for the wider community. So I had accepted Min’s invitation, had touted Nick’s encyclopaedic knowledge of world capitals and premiership football; had delved into my purse on the spot for our share of the entry fee, even though Min assured me we could pay on the night. And now it was the night, and if I could have turned and run, I would have.

  It was, as Nick had promised, ‘a lovely boozer’, the sort of place you came across on holiday and never shut up about when you got home – leadlights and roses round the door and locals playing dominoes in the snug. It had been a sticky day. A pearl grey sky was stretched tight as a drum skin over the valley. Around the trestle tables out front sat hikers who had popped in for a pint at four and never left. Inside, the air was warm as beer, and there was a friendly atmosphere. Being a fundraiser for a nearby hospice, the quiz night had attracted, besides the regulars whose special pewter tankards hung above the bar, a cross section of village society. There was a table of scruffy-looking eccentrics with loud, entitled voices – ‘Old money’, Nick told me under his breath – and a gaggle of blokes by the bar in windowpane checks and designer jeans, whom I could see for myself were ‘new money’. There was a gang of rugger-buggers competitively downing pints and on the other side of the inglenook, a table of book-club cougars with highlighted hair and expensive casual wear. The vicar was there, and the local poet in his sailor’s gansey. There was a horsey contingent and a hippy contingent and a gaggle of underage youth from the town, conspicuous by their desire to fly under the radar. Yet even these shifty sixteen-year-olds looked more at home than I felt.

  ‘I’ve a book of local walks I can lend you,’ Douglas Gaines said to me as we ducked under a beam and made our way toward a table ‘reserved’ for us with a scribble on a folded napkin. ‘There are plenty of them and most of them are way-marked, so it’s really quite hard to get lost.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t lost,’ I started saying, ‘I just went up the hill behind our—’ Nick gave me a look. ‘But yeah, that would be lovely.’

  ‘So, what’s everyone drinking?’ My husband reached for his wallet. With one ear on Douglas’s friendly prattle, I watched him stroll to the bar and catch the barmaid’s eye ahead of his turn – classic Nick. He’d done the same to me the day we’d met – cut me up in the queue for the bar. Not that he remembered it that way. In his retelling, he’d swept me off my feet. Banter, cocktails; never looked back. Does it count as queue jumping, if the person in front of you is invisible? Because I don’t think he even saw me at first. I was next in line and then suddenly, I wasn’t. It was only when I muttered ‘be my guest’ under my breath, that he turned round, fixed his unfeasibly blue eyes on me and said with his mile-wide, fair cop grin, ‘And what’ll you have…?’

  I watched him tip the barmaid now, and barge his way back to our table with a tray of drinks, somehow contriving to have the people on whose toes he trod apologise to him.

  There was a whine of feedback, and an amplified phut as the landlord tapped the top of his mic.

  ‘Am I on?’ he said, and everyone clutched their ears.

  ‘Evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, once the volume had been adjusted, ‘welcome to The Fleece charity pub quiz. And you are. Welcome to it. Boom, boom. No, seriously, I hope you’ve got your wits about you and your phones switched off – yes, I’m talking to you, Dave Sullivan. Is he in, Dave? Where are you, you cheating bastard…?’

  ‘Just kidding, folks. It was all a misunderstanding, wasn’t it, Dave? Half a day in the stocks and he saw the error of his ways. A-n-yway, ladies and gents, for those of you who do want to play by the rules they’re very few and very simple. Just like our regulars…’

  The landlord continued his banter while his wife, a glamorous redhead, distributed the quiz sheets.

  ‘Who’s going to be captain?’ said Ray.

  ‘Do we need a captain?’ Imogen asked.

  ‘Just someone to write down the answers and adjudicate if there’s a difference of opinion,’ Douglas suggested.

  ‘God help them!’ Min muttered with a wry smile.

  ‘Well, I know literally nothing about anything so…’ I started to say.

  ‘Here,’ Cath reached for the clipboard, and I wasn’t sure whether she was exasperated at our team’s indecisiveness or my self-deprecation, ‘I’ll be captain.’

  ‘OK,’ boomed the landlord, at last. ‘A nice easy round to get you started: visual arts.’

  Nick caught my eye and gave me a little nod of tacit encouragement. I felt a twinge of anxiety.

  ‘Which artist painted The House of Doctor Gachet at Auvers?’

  A collective groan went up.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ shrugged the landlord, all injured innocence. ‘Come on, folks, this is kindergarten stuff. I’ll repeat the question. Which painter…’

  ‘Auvers…’ said Nick, tapping the table urgently with his fingertips. That’s ringing bells. Come on, Kaz, we know this…’

  He glanced at me and I shrugged stupidly. Auvers, Auvers. It didn’t mean anything… and then all of a sudden, it did.

  Sunlight slanting through stained-glass windows onto sandstone pillars, the patter of Ethan’s five-year-old feet as he ran towards the votive candles, hand outstretched, Nick’s intervention; tears, a scuffle. My outrage. ‘He’s only little.’ His furious hissed response, comparing English children unfavourably with the mythical French ones who will sit through a five-course dinner without a peep. We made up afterwards. He bought Ethan an ice cream and me a pretty postcard – a painting of the exterior of the church, drooping like a circus tent against an inky sky, a nun making her way into the foreground down a cobbled path, her eyes downcast. It could only have been by one artist.

  ‘Van Gogh!’ I all but shouted.

  ‘Oh.’ Imogen Gaines bit her lip in amusement. ‘I was just about to say Cézanne.’

  We smiled at each other politely, neither of us wanting to contradict the other, each of us equally sure she was right.

  ‘Could do worse than listen to Immie, people,’ Douglas Gaines murmured, ‘she does have a first in art history…’

  ‘Oh well, in that case…’ I backtracked. ‘Only I thought… isn’t Cézanne more Provence?’

  ‘I’m putting Van Gogh,’ Cath said, and that was that.

  ‘Question two,’ said the landlord and the buzz of conversation died down again. ‘By what name was the actor Archibald Leach better known?’

  ‘Oh, that’s an easy one,’ said Ray.

  Cath raised her eyebrows enquiringly, pen poised.

  ‘Tell ’er, Min.’ Ray gave his wife an affectionate nudge.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Min said.

  ‘You do,’ he insisted, ‘Archie Leach. Bristol-born. One of your mum’s favourites.’

  ‘You see, this is what he does,’ she said to the rest of us.

  ‘What?’ Ray affected innocence.

  ‘You make a big production out of it. You know very well I haven’t a clue. You’re just spinning it out to make yourself lo
ok good.’

  ‘How does asking you for the answer make me look good?’ he protested, but he’d been rumbled, and his wry smile told us he knew it.

  It was nice to watch them play out this charade, the back-and-forth, the faux exasperation, obviously masking a deep affection. They were an unlikely couple, he a grizzled biker of sixty or so, she at least ten years his junior, genteel and pretty in skinny jeans and pumps. She was the last person you would expect to ride pillion, yet I had seen the two of them myself, more than once, roaring round the lanes on their Ducati, locked together in leather like a pair of mating cockroaches.

  ‘I could do my impression…?’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Min, wincing, but Ray was already in character, setting his jaw and knitting his brows, his accent pitched halfway between Hampstead and Hollywood.

  ‘Juday! Juday! Juday!’ he said and even I knew it was supposed to be Cary Grant. The whole pub erupted.

  ‘All right over there, giving the game away,’ said the landlord sternly, ‘I’ll be docking you points if you’re not careful. Question three. What was the name of the exhibition mounted by Charles Saatchi at the Royal Academy in 1997, which launched the careers of the so-called YBAs?’

  ‘Sensation,’ said Nick, quick as a flash.

  ‘So it was,’ Douglas Gaines nodded. ‘That was the one with the cut-in-half shark and the fried egg how’s your father, wasn’t it? Miracle they got away with that garbage, looking back…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Nick, ‘I thought the shark was pretty cool. The Inability of the Living to Contemplate Death…’

  ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living,’ Imogen corrected him. I watched Nick bridle and then look at her with fresh eyes.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Iconic artwork anyway.’

  ‘So everyone says,’ Imogen replied, tilting her head archly. ‘But hardly an original one. I think Holbein said it better in The Ambassadors.’

  Nick made a ‘get you’ face; it was both grudging and admiring, a look that signalled a re-evaluation. He had given me that look once…

  ‘… I’ll have a margarita, if you insist,’ I’d said and then spoiled the effect by blushing. It was hard not to be seduced by Nick’s easy charm and studied dishevelment, tie already yanked to half-mast. He hadn’t turned a hair, to give him his due. Just took the hit – which was generous as only the beer and wine were on the tab – it being my boss’s third wedding. The order took ages, especially the margarita, as the barman was really only used to pulling pints. By the time he’d poured it with great ceremony and added the straw, Nick was holding out a twenty a little impatiently between his middle fingers. He paused for a second while I took the first sip, more, I think, to satisfy himself that he had successfully charmed me than because he really cared if I liked it. If I hadn’t been a bit squiffy from the lunchtime reception, I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve, but I made a bit of a meal of it, tilting my head from side to side, narrowing my eyes, swallowing…

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, ‘a bit light on the triple sec…’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, still bantering, still eager to make good his escape, ‘isn’t it always the way?’

  ‘Not in Tijuana,’ I said.

  That was when he’d given me the look; the look he was giving Sloaney Imogen now. ‘Hello…’ it seemed to say, ‘you may be of interest after all…’

  ‘Didn’t it all start decomposing,’ Cath said breezily, ‘the shark? You’d be mightily pissed off, wouldn’t you, if you’d paid squillions for an original Damien Hirst and you ended up with a nasty wee bit of muck in a tank.’

  ‘He had to remake it, actually,’ Imogen said. ‘There was a bit of hoo-hah about whether he could call it the same thing, despite it being, essentially, a whole new artwork, but he claimed that being a conceptual artist, the idea of the work was more important to him than the physical expression of it, so…’ she shrugged prettily and there was an awed silence. I remembered then that it was Cézanne and not Van Gogh who had painted The House of Doctor Gachet at Auvers.

  ‘Only right they beat us, really,’ Douglas Gaines declared as we ambled homeward at closing time. ‘What with that chap’s mother being a patient in the hospice; lovely for him to be able to take her the cheque. It brings a lump to my throat just thinking about it.’

  ‘We gave them a run for their money though,’ Nick said. ‘Narrow margin.’

  I could feel my cheeks colouring in the darkness. Nick had never been a good loser, especially when pipped to the post by a bunch of posh boys. And it had been the rugger-buggers who’d won the day, confounding expectations with their in-depth knowledge of meteorology, roman numerals and the lyrics of the Spice Girls.

  ‘Well, if anyone’s to blame, it’s me,’ I said. ‘We might have won if I’d listened to Imogen.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Min called over her shoulder, ‘you did brilliantly.’

  ‘Hardly matters now,’ muttered Nick.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ agreed Douglas Gaines. ‘The main thing is we raised the money and had a good time. At least I did. Haha.’

  ‘Oh yes, it was fun,’ Imogen agreed. ‘I love it when the village comes together. It doesn’t happen often enough. We should do that Auction of Promises we were talking about, Douglas. Get the marquee up while the weather holds.’

  As the road curved away from the village and the footpath narrowed, we transformed ourselves from a tipsy rabble into a more or less orderly procession, with those who had had the foresight to bring torches lighting the way for the rest. The air was thick with a coming storm, so that even the occasional gust of fume-laden air from a passing car brought welcome relief.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Cath, weaving a little, ‘what did you reckon to the Village of the Damned?’

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ I said, hedging my bets, ‘I mean, they’re not exactly soul mates, but they seem a decent bunch, on the whole.’

  Cath snorted.

  ‘What?’ I said, but she shook her head mysteriously.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ she said.

  ‘Do you not go up the pub much then?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It’s all right on a night like tonight, but it can be a bit cliquey the rest of the time, if you get me…’

  I thought I probably did.

  ‘So what do you do for entertainment?’ I asked, boldly.

  ‘Oh, I’m not much of a party animal any more,’ Cath replied and a wistfulness seemed to come over her. ‘I’m happy enough with my seed catalogues and a box set these days…’

  I was about to probe further, when she stopped and sniffed the air.

  Up ahead, the others had congregated at the point where the road broke out of the woods and started to curve along the valley’s edge.

  ‘They’re waiting for us.’ I hooked my arm through Cath’s and urged her into a comical jog, which became less comical and more sheepish as we got nearer and saw that the others had not, in fact, stopped to wait for us, but to gaze in consternation across the valley.

  ‘Shit!’ mouthed Cath.

  ‘Is that a fire?’ I said, dumbly as if any other phenomenon could be responsible for the sparks shooting up into the darkness above the treeline and the sky glowing dirty pink.

  Only now did the douf douf of house music and the stutter of a strobe light impinge. This was not pyromania, then, but recreation.

  ‘It isn’t the first time,’ Ray said grimly. ‘And they’ll be going till three if it’s the same mob.’

  ‘What is it, some kind of rave?’ I asked. I could imagine Ethan’s withering sarcasm, ‘Some kind of rave, Mother?’

  ‘Just kids,’ Cath patted my arm, ‘summer solstice. Nothing to fret over.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Douglas Gaines, ‘you wonder what their parents are thinking.’

  ‘Good job we’ve no guests this weekend,’ muttered Min.

  ‘It’s not the noise that worries me,’ grumbled Douglas Gain
es, ‘it’s the destruction of habitat. They moan about the Hunt, this lot, but they don’t think twice about the havoc they’re wreaking with their fires and their rubbish and their bloody racket.’

  As if to underline his point, a stuttering bile green laser lit up the sky, prompting a burst of joyous ululation from the revellers. With much tutting and head-shaking, we moved off again, clambering over a nearby stile and down the muddy path that came out near the old barn, lately a repository for several abandoned and burned-out vehicles. The air of camaraderie that had united us after the pub quiz was replaced now by one of disapproval and righteous indignation, to which I found myself instinctively resistant. For all the selfishness of the revellers, there was an energy to their hedonism that I found beguiling. It seemed life-enhancing and visceral, a sybaritic two-fingered salute to everything about the English countryside that was staid and safe and depressing – the tea shops and the kagouls and the olde-worlde typefaces; the Miss Marple prettiness of it all.

  We kept up a desultory chat for a while, but the closer we got to the hamlet, the more the music reverberated within the hollow of the landscape, so that, parting company, we had to time our farewells to fall on the off-beat or go unheard. Only Cath, waving a cheery goodbye and staggering slightly as she hauled herself up the steps to her house, seemed assured of a good night’s rest.

  7

  It must have been the silence that woke me; I lifted my head off the pillow and thought for a minute I’d gone deaf, it was so profound. You wouldn’t think it possible to fall asleep to a pounding techno beat but apparently it is. Douf, douf, douf for hours on end – coming up through the foundations of the house, making the floorboards leap, making my chest thud until douf, douf, douf was who I was. And now it had stopped, and it took me a moment to recognize that the soft phutt phutt phutt that had replaced it was not tinnitus, but the sound of raindrops falling on the window.