September 2015
Stephen
The last fifteen minutes were spectacularly beautiful: the Kirkstone Pass, the descent into the valley, the patterning of sheep on the fells. Stephen drove slowly. Seeing Cressida – meeting her in that almost comically dramatic way in the middle of nowhere – had caught him off guard, sharpening his recollection of that long-ago weekend.
He hadn’t been back to the Lake District since 1995, but he remembered, now, how powerfully this landscape had gripped him that summer. He remembered lying on a grassy plateau far above the lake one afternoon, while the others chattered and laughed and speculated about the future, toying with the idea of staying here, finding casual work as a waiter or a farmhand.
The one thing none of them could have imagined during that sunny picnic, he thought, was that they would be meeting here again in 2015, having not seen or spoken to each other for two decades. He’d been separated from them all within a few months, of course, by geography. Geography and a general inclination – no, be honest: a specific inclination – to steer clear. What about the others? What had they been doing all this time?
As the car rolled smoothly through the village, he forced himself to acknowledge both the flush of nostalgia and the itch and prickle of the things none of them would want to talk about this weekend. But amidst the challenge and complexity of his life there was very little that engaged his emotions, he thought: it would do him no harm to embroil himself in what was to come. After all, he had less cause than the others to feel agitated about 1995. Less to reproach himself for, at least, although he couldn’t claim complete indifference. Of course he couldn’t claim that, even after all this time.
*
There was only one car in the drive, a four-by-four of the kind lots of people drove these days. Which of the others was most likely to have a vehicle like that? Stephen wondered. He could hear Cressida’s car straining up the hill behind him now, and he waited until she had pulled in beside him before he got out.
And then the front door opened and there were three people standing on the threshold. Good Lord, a trick of the mind: his old friends aged and repackaged and assembled in one place again. That must be Bill, that man with a beard. And Judith, unmistakable. But who . . .? His heart did a brief flip, and then he quelled it. Bill’s wife, he thought.
‘Hello!’ Bill held out a hand to shake Stephen’s, withdrew it, then tried again, laughing. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘Let’s shake hands. It’s good to see you.’
‘Good to see you too, Bill,’ said Stephen.
‘This is Isabel, my wife,’ said Bill. ‘And my goodness, Cressida!’
‘We should let poor Cressida sit down,’ Stephen said. ‘She’s had a shock. I had to stop for some sheep, and she came round the corner and ran into me.’
‘I’m all right,’ Cressida said. ‘Don’t fuss.’ But she looked pleased, the lines on her forehead (the watermark of loneliness, Stephen thought, in a flight of fancy that took him by surprise) eased for a moment. It had never taken much, he remembered, to cheer Cressida up. He felt a momentary disquiet then, recalling that ill-judged, long-submerged encounter that had been part of the muddle and misadventure of their last stay here. Part, surely, of the things not to be talked about.
They followed each other into the house. So far, so civilised, Stephen thought. In the big sitting room, he halted: the sun was beginning to set across the valley, bathing the room in pinkish light. It was this room he remembered best, and he felt a strange quiver of sentiment as he looked around at the furniture, the pictures, the William Morris curtains.
‘That smell,’ he said. ‘I remember that smell. What is it?’
‘Ash,’ said Cressida, ‘from the fire. And old carpets.’
‘Books,’ said Bill. ‘And a whiff of polish.’
Judith laughed. ‘God, this is like one of Fay’s games,’ she said. ‘Please let’s not have any of those this weekend.’
There was silence for a moment, as though the thread of conversation was too fragile to be tweaked so briskly. Cressida was looking straight at Judith, her expression unreadable. Bill’s eyes were firmly on his wife. Stephen was on the point of asking about bedrooms when Isabel spoke instead.
‘Is this everyone?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Judith, a note of decision, almost of defiance, in her voice. ‘This is everyone.’ She looked at Stephen. ‘Bill found some food in the fridge. Shall we do something about supper?’
*
The kitchen was too small for five people. Bill hovered in the doorway for a few moments, then seized on the idea of making a fire, and Cressida announced that she was going to have a bath, if they could do without her. That left Stephen with Judith and Isabel. Glancing from one to the other, he deduced that Judith had no wish to demonstrate domestic proficiency, and that Isabel (dark and plump and rather sweet) was reticent about putting herself forward. Stephen remembered cooking breakfast in this kitchen, but more fortifying was another memory: threadbare meals cooked on a faltering Calor stove in a remote Nigerian village. That was only a few years after the High Scarp weekend, he thought, wondering at the odd way life laid itself out in your memory, but it reminded him that he was an adult, and competent.
‘Sausages and mash?’ he said. ‘And we could make a fruit salad. What d’you think?’
This, he thought, was like one of the reality TV shows he found bizarrely fascinating after so many years away from the UK. Come Dine with Me meets Wife Swap, perhaps. Bill passed to and fro a couple of times, fetching wood and kindling and searching for matches, while conversation among the cooks flitted between safe topics such as the optimal blend of fruit for the salad, the bluntness of the knives, and how long it had taken them all to get here. Isabel might not be aware of the danger zones, Stephen thought, but her presence somehow made it easier to skirt around them.
‘Is Cressida OK?’ Judith asked, after a little while. ‘It wasn’t serious, I take it, your prang?’
‘No,’ said Stephen. ‘No damage done, I don’t think.’
‘Good.’ Judith went on chopping apples. Silence spooled out for a time. Bill reappeared, his hands covered in soot.
‘Roaring blaze,’ he reported. ‘Not the easiest chimney, but it’s drawing nicely now.’
He was looking at Judith, Stephen noticed. His expression was hard to decipher, but the steadiness of his gaze spoke for itself. Or did it? He wanted to know what she was thinking, certainly. Perhaps Judith was conscious of his eyes on her too, because she put down her knife and said, ‘I need a drink. Did our fairy godmother leave a bottle of wine in the fridge?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Bill, but Stephen had remembered something.
‘There used to be a whole cellarful downstairs,’ he said. ‘Shall we go and look?’
‘Let’s.’ Judith swept up her hair from her shoulders, as though to twist it into a plait, then let it drop again. ‘God, that’s an exciting thought. Do you think the wine has all been left to us too?’
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ said Stephen. ‘There may not be any.’
Isabel tipped her pile of fruit into the bowl and turned to smile at her husband.
‘All done,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d pick some flowers for the table. Come with me?’
*
The light had gone in the cellar – a half-finished room built into the hillside behind the two downstairs bedrooms – but even so it was obvious that plenty of wine remained in the racks around the walls.
‘This is a turn-up,’ said Judith. ‘We can get absolutely rat-arsed.’
‘Not me,’ said Stephen, ‘but I shall watch your progress with interest.’
‘You’re not teetotal, are you?’
‘Not quite. Just out of the habit.’
‘I hope you haven’t turned boring on me,’ Judith said. ‘I was relying on you to get me through this.’
Stephen studied her face for a moment. Not entirely fine, he thought. Not
as fine as she looked at first sight.
‘I was relying on you to unravel the legal knots for us,’ he said.
‘Bill’s your man for that. Not my area.’
Stephen pulled a bottle out of the nearest rack. 1989 claret: goodness. Perhaps they shouldn’t drink that. ‘What is your area?’ he asked.
‘Defending thugs,’ said Judith. ‘AKA the poor and dispossessed. Not usually thugs, actually. Women, immigrants. Discrimination. Human rights.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Didn’t you look us all up?’
‘I didn’t, actually.’
‘Very honourable.’ Judith grinned. ‘Have you found anything decent?’
‘I hardly know where to start. You pick something.’
Judith pulled out one bottle and then another, making little staccato comments. After a moment she held one out to him.
‘Beaujolais,’ she said. ‘Might be a bit over the hill; we’d be doing everyone a favour by drinking it up. How many do you think? Three?’
Stephen took two bottles from her and moved back towards the door. It was rather gloomy down here, and he felt a sudden qualm about allowing himself to be aligned too closely with Judith. That would be easy to do, he thought, but not the right way to go about things.
‘Promise me one thing,’ she said. ‘No games. I meant it.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. But he wondered, as they climbed the stairs again, whether she meant exactly the opposite.
September 2015
Cressida
Cressida had been relieved to escape the enforced camaraderie of the cooking party, but when she emerged after her bath she felt – and how common this feeling had been in her life, she thought – that she’d missed out on some crucial moment of bonding. The others were sitting around the fire, and there was a jollity about the scene that made her quail a little. They had all made more progress than she had, she thought, over the last two hours – and the last two decades, she felt sure. Grown into different people, with more dimensions than they’d had before. She’d simply become more settled as a stereotype: no longer the quaintly entertaining would-be bluestocking, but the real thing.
She hesitated in the doorway, waiting for one of them to notice her, to welcome her into the circle, but no one did. Marmion would have been the one to do it, she thought, with a twinge of sensibility. But she mustn’t allow herself to confuse compassion for Marmion with self-pity.
‘Hello,’ she said, mustering her best High Table smile. ‘How pretty those flowers are.’
‘That was Isabel,’ said Judith. ‘Stephen and I picked wine instead. Have a glass – I should think you need it, after being run over by that outrageous car.’
For a moment Cressida was heartened: Judith might have mellowed, she thought. Then she saw Judith grin at Stephen, and she understood. Bill was off limits; he’d brought his wife. That only left Stephen, and although Judith wouldn’t have given Stephen a second look when they were all young . . . Damn it, she thought. Nothing had changed. Not a bloody thing.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Bill, indicating the space next to him on the sofa. ‘Supper’s all ready, but we thought . . .’
‘Keep up the High Scarp traditions,’ Cressida said, accepting a glass of wine.
‘Ha!’ said Judith. ‘I’d forgotten that was one of them. Drinks before dinner. God almighty.’
‘What do you mean?’ Isabel asked. There was a brief silence then – long enough for Cressida to feel a little sorry for Isabel. She had an air of competence, the plucky sort rather than the effortless sort, but she certainly wasn’t any match for Judith. But Judith smiled sweetly.
‘There were lots of rules and regulations, the last time we came,’ she said. ‘There was something of the control freak about Fay.’
Cressida was on the point of protesting, but she stopped herself. Dangerous, she thought, to assert any kind of moral superiority. Quite apart from the bellyful of hypocrisy she’d had to swallow over the last couple of decades, she was at enough of a disadvantage already this weekend.
‘Did you stay in touch with Fay, Cressida?’ Stephen asked. ‘Back in Cambridge?’
‘Not for long. She moved, soon after – not long after we graduated.’
‘Moved away from Cambridge?’ Bill looked surprised. ‘That house seemed so much of a piece with her. All those books and records – and do you remember the roses? Fay pruning the roses?’
‘The house is still there,’ said Cressida. She cycled past it sometimes, slowing to look across the front garden. There were prams and scooters in the porch these days, and Fay’s rose bushes had all gone.
‘Where did she move to?’ asked Stephen.
‘I don’t know.’ Cressida hesitated: she’d hoped to leave all this rather hazier. ‘She just . . . There was a ‘sold’ sign up one day, and she’d gone.’
‘She can’t have been living up here,’ said Judith. ‘No Wi-Fi, same old television. You couldn’t live in a house for twenty years without . . . But perhaps Fay could.’
She ended on a reflective rather than a sarcastic note, as if realising that another satirical remark about their benefactress might be ill-judged. But she was right, Cressida thought, that nothing had changed in the house. Imperial Leather soap in the bathrooms, lapsang souchong tea in the kitchen. The same curtains, the same bedclothes, the same towels, like a trick of the memory.
‘Maybe she went abroad,’ said Stephen. ‘Italy, perhaps. Wasn’t there somewhere near Rome she used to stay?’
‘She was keen on Italian food, I remember,’ Judith said. ‘All that risotto.’
Cressida remembered lamb chops at Fay’s house, lots of red meat of the kind people didn’t eat any more, but she didn’t say so.
‘And awful liqueurs,’ said Judith, as though she couldn’t stop herself; couldn’t help the note of parody in her voice. ‘Chartreuse: do you remember drinking chartreuse? Or absinthe. That was even worse.’
It was Judith, Cressida thought, who’d said she didn’t want to play games. They were all silent now, not meeting each other’s eyes. It was a relief when Bill stirred.
‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ he said, ‘but I’m hungry. Shall we eat?’
Isabel was on her feet first. ‘It’s all ready,’ she said, and then she blushed, as though she’d claimed too much credit for herself. ‘Many hands, light work.’
*
‘Does anyone have a theory,’ Judith asked, when the fruit salad had been distributed and the small talk about jobs and parents and holidays had begun to fizzle out, ‘about why we get the house?’
‘It’s odd she didn’t have anyone else to leave it to,’ Bill said. ‘I’d imagined her taking on another group of choral scholars after we left, but . . .’
‘She left Cambridge, as I said.’ Cressida reached for her wine glass: she rarely drank red, but a glass or two had felt necessary this evening, and there was no white on offer.
She didn’t much want to talk about Fay, for reasons she knew were shabby. It was partly a general squeamishness about the past – about their past – but she was also reluctant to admit how quickly her efforts to stay in touch had foundered, back in 1995. At the time she’d felt both culpable and aggrieved about Fay’s disappearance. It was ridiculous to imagine that Fay might have left Cambridge to avoid her, but even so it had seemed to underline all that had been lost that summer. It had made her feel she had no talent for holding onto anything she cared about. She could have made more effort, she acknowledged now – asking the college if they had a forwarding address, for example – but she’d been out of love with St Anne’s that autumn; she’d kept away as much as she could. She couldn’t be blamed for that, surely?
‘I assume it’s a token of affection,’ she said now – but she wished the phrase unsaid as soon as it was spoken. Affection was too dangerous a word for this evening.
‘It does rather seem to underline our importance to her,’ said Stephen, �
�but then we don’t know how much else she had to leave. High Scarp might have been an afterthought, almost, in her will.’
‘You mean she bequeathed it to us on a whim?’ said Bill.
‘Possibly. She was pleased that we liked the place, wasn’t she? That we enjoyed ourselves here.’
‘And what else do you think she’s going to require of us?’ Judith demanded, a slight roughness of tone revealing a chink in her sangfroid. ‘Apart from charades and absinthe, of course.’
Isabel looked at her, wide-eyed. Cressida was struck suddenly by her resemblance to Marmion. Seeing her beside Bill, and the way she kept looking at him . . . Did they have children? she wondered. There’d been no mention of them. For some reason that thought didn’t make her feel any better. Nor did the way Bill’s eyes kept flicking past Judith without settling.
‘Speaking of absinthe,’ said Stephen, ‘I seem to remember a little cupboard – yes, look, over there by the fireplace. Would anyone like a whisky, if there is any?’
As Bill leapt to his feet and Judith shook her head and poured the last of the wine into her glass, Cressida felt an unexpected prick of sadness. They hardly knew each other, she thought. Somehow she’d imagined them picking up exactly where they’d left off, and although she’d dreaded the thought of that, it was worse to discover that all that history, that intense undergraduate friendship, was more an obstruction than a way in. It might, she thought, be a very long weekend.
June 1995
Bill
The morning light cut through the faded curtains with the steadfast beat of a summer day set fair for sunshine. Bill’s head throbbed with a pain that was equally steadfast but strangely hard to locate: the sound of it pulsing and racketing seemed to echo around him like a siren, as though everyone for miles around must be able to hear it too and trace it back to his shame and distress.
Every Secret Thing Page 11