“It was a different time. Her family was very poor. Her brother died when he was five. Before the NHS and not enough money for the doctor. Always haunted by relatives who’d ended up in the poor house. Her mother wouldn’t let her visit the library, said it was above them. Class, the rubbish about class. Her family had nothing, but they were respectable. Even so, my family opposed us getting married. It’s so easy to love the past, as long as you don’t actually look at it. And so easy to regret it, of course. I do, Andy. There are things I regret, failures … I failed you and Peter, and I have known it for a very long time.”
My throat was very thick. I didn’t want him to think he had failed. This anxious, shy man, laboring over his sermons, greeting the children and adults at Harvest Festival with a great booming welcome, hands shaking, but why always God the Father, God the Son? Why not God the Mother, God the Daughter, why not marry the gays? I tried to say as much.
“I gave him books. Oscar Wilde. Auden. I didn’t want to invade his privacy. But I suppose that is an excuse too. I sometimes wish Jesus had endured the world just a bit longer. Thirty-three. It’s not a lot, is it, Andy?”
I made noises to go.
“You will come back and see us, won’t you? You won’t leave it so long?”
I promised. Before I went, he took my hand.
“You know, I cannot count the evenings we have sat here and talked about you and Peter, remembering your little ways. I would watch you, out there in the garden. I always thought God was in the games you played; they gave me faith, like when you watch the wind fill a sail and the boat leaps forward. Grace. It showed such grace.”
* * *
The last night together, we watched television. It felt an old-fashioned thing to be doing, sharing a single screen between three. I thought how one day people would look back on communal television watching with the same nostalgia they reserved for charades and playing cards.
The program was an ITV Sunday night special. There had been a murder. And it was the best kind of murder, a middle-class murder somewhere beautiful, neither gruesome nor graphic, with a pleasing array of suspects, and a detective who drank too much, but quietly, and had been wounded by life. In one of the breaks, Patricia made cocoa, missing the first minute of the next part, and never quite catching up again, so she asked questions at important moments and it was a great act of will not to shush her.
Nevertheless, we were gripped. Ten o’clock came and went without mention of bed. In the ad breaks, we discussed who we thought had done it, and which suspects were the red herrings, and the whole thing rose to a tense denouement, in which the detective had to race against time to prevent a further murder and was nearly offed himself.
“Look out!” we shouted at the crucial moment. The detective looked out, the murderer was apprehended, and in the final scene the detective shared some melancholy reflections on human nature with his partner, a bright-eyed sergeant.
We sat there spellbound till the final credits rolled, and then went to our beds consoled, and I lay there in the darkness, thinking how different the program was from life. How life was full of mysteries that would not be solved, not ever, while we lived. But that each of us would play the detective nonetheless, and the life and death we would investigate, whether we knew it or not, was our own. And the thing was not to become deadened to them, to the mysteries.
CHAPTER 24
THE CAVE OF DREAMS
I took the bus to Swindon with a newly bought rucksack on my back and a tin on my knees, a whole sponge cake inside that I had to balance on my lap on the way to the train station. I would eat it piece by piece over the next twelve hours, sharing slices with the mum and daughter off for a day’s shopping in London, the dancer who was on her way to Paris for an audition.
“Just a sliver, then, but only a sliver.”
A couple on the train south through France.
“Un gâteau anglais? C’est bon!”
I muttered the names of the stations under my breath. So many years since French class! There was only one slice left, when I finally arrived at the little station deep in the Ardèche. A single car, battered and dusted in ocher, was waiting in the car park.
David put his hand on my waist, leaned in for a kiss.
“What’s in the tin?”
“Cake.”
“I see.” He lifted it for weight. “Feels a bit light.”
“Sacrifices had to be made.”
My face was so pleased to see him, it hurt.
“And Peter?”
“On her Majesty’s secret service.”
* * *
The summer was as dry as the spring had been wet. A forest fire in the hills above the campsite at Malbosc. The night turning red, smoke blowing up toward the sickle moon.
“Why cave paintings?”
“There are some things you can’t get out of your head, Andy.” David was standing behind me, his arms loose around my waist. He dropped a kiss on my bare shoulder. “You may as well get on with seeing what they mean.”
A bad driver, humming as the locals tailgated him in a fury.
At the guesthouse, the ancient landlady fell in love with him. Cheri, Cheri, Cheri! She had a black cat—putain!—forever weaving through our legs.
School French: La fraise. Le framboise. J’aime beaucoup des glaces. J’aime beaucoup la nuit.
There is a ruined castle of the Knights Templar, an abandoned village. A rope swing out over a gorge. The jade waters beckoning. The cold green gulp.
We are hunting aurochs, the aurochs underground.
What comes after disillusionment? Can it be lived with? Can it be accommodated? Can you say to someone, you broke my heart and will break it again, and know any peace? Can that someone be life itself?
David bending over the camping stove, chasing a tea bag round a saucepan with a spoon.
The red and white way markers. The forest trails. The cliffs where the climbers come every summer, leaning out over the river, imitating the angels.
“What will we do when the money runs out?”
“What have people ever done?”
The tent in the glade, a brindled dog darting in from out of nowhere and stealing the sausages.
On a forest path at dawn we meet an Afghan man with two Somali companions. He is walking to Paris, his friends to Calais. They fear the farmers and their dogs, the police, for those left behind, the coming winter. One has a laugh rich as August sunshine.
Oh, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!
* * *
Deep play. I love you. I love you. Of course, it is a game.
* * *
The bulls are waiting under the earth in total darkness. In my sleep, I hear them stamping, their hot breath.
We buy torches, rope, begin startling bats among the rocky overhangs. In the caves, there is often the smell of water, pooled and stagnant.
Sometimes, there are dark mouths high up on the cliffs. I climb up but most of the caves are shallow. In many there are places where the walls are blackened by smoke. I crumble the soft ash of a fire between my fingertips. Who were you, traveler? It blows away on the wind.
“Come down from there.”
“You come up.”
It pays to have something to hunt, something outside ourselves.
“What if it caves in, the cave? What if we’re buried down there with the aurochs?”
It pays to have something to fear, something outside ourselves.
* * *
This one is deep. We dare each other, a little further, a little further again. We whisper for no reason. David swings the torch and the light jerks wildly, and for a moment we’re on a boat and the deck is pitching under our feet.
A little further, just a little further. Laughter, fear and laughter.
“Turn off the torch.”
David turns off the torch and the darkness is complete. I cannot tell my eyelid from my eye. At my side, David smells like river water and campfire smoke. I
t is cold here, the heat of his body is like a beacon.
Now the whole world is a dream: the houses and offices, the supermarkets and IKEAs, Selfridges, the Savoy, the churches and chapels, the manor. The commuters gazing at their phones are dreaming, the climbers ascending the cliff walls. The cities are dreaming, and the Downs, the gorges and forests, the sea gripped in a pulsating, churning dream. The world dreaming all of it back.
I feel the millions of tons of rock pressing down. The ancient darkness. And yes, the aurochs!
So still, so quiet, I think I can hear David’s racing heart. His mouth swims against my ear.
“So, can you see it yet?”
“What?”
“A future.”
Fragile, the vision. Wet and trembling in the mind’s eye, yet to unfurl. I cannot look at it directly, but it is there and it is mine.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I think I can.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To be frank, the journey to this page has been long and plentiful in orcs (but oh, the views!) and I’d need another book to name everyone who helped along the way.
I would like to thank my family, especially my parents—for the books, the understanding, the endless support, and for giving me the kind of childhood that is a gift to a writer and allowing me to share it with so many friends. I’d also like to thank Toby and James for the art therapy. See beloved nephews, here you are in a book! Nor do I know where I’d be without Gijs Van Koningsveld, my heart’s companion and the greatest source of magic I know.
My heartfelt appreciation goes to Suzannah Dunn, Debra Hills, Jen Hewson, Abbie Holmes, Susanna Forrest, Traci Kim, Brigid Delaney, Leighton Cheal, Jenna Krumminga, Lucy Jones, Odysseas Vasilakis, Kenneth Macleod, Kristin Harrison, Ulrike Kloss, and the Berlin writing community, particularly all the Reader Berliners. Thanks to Tom Pugh for the Hasenheide strolls, feedback, and encouragement when I needed it most, and to Jane Flett for apparating in my life, bearing so many gifts, like the very good witch she is.
I am hugely grateful to Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton for her insight, kindness, and unwavering enthusiasm; to my brilliant editors Rebecca Gray and Leonora Craig Cohen at Serpent’s Tail and Caroline Zancan and Kerry Cullen at Henry Holt; and to Lucy Carson and Molly Friedrich of The Friedrich Agency, whose belief in this novel was such an unexpected delight.
Finally, I would like to remember Andraya, one of my very first friends. Andraya’s death during the writing of this novel changed its shape. In her name, I say to anyone affected by intimate partner violence: you are not alone; it is not your fault; please seek help. Your first loyalty is to yourself.
To Andraya I would say this: I have thought of you often in these last years. The memories of our adventures on the farm have returned to me with such clarity, I cannot believe they are really over. Instead, it seems more likely that we are still out there, risking our parents’ wrath as the sun sets, perhaps in the barns, or sitting on a tractor, or down by the stream. The whole summer lies ahead. Tomorrow let’s make a campfire. Knock on the back door and I’ll be waiting …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Gosling is a British author, currently living in Berlin. She grew up on a farm in Wiltshire, studied at the Universities of Manchester and Amsterdam, and has lived in London, Australia, Brazil, and the Czech Republic. Victoria is the founder of The Reader Berlin, a writer’s platform, and of the Berlin Writing Prize. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1: Game
Chapter 2: Apocalypse I
Chapter 3: Wedding
Chapter 4: Apocalypse II
Chapter 5: Tower
Chapter 6: Apocalypse III
Chapter 7: Telephone Box
Chapter 8: Diamonds
Chapter 9: Enchanted Palace I
Chapter 10: Swipe Left
Chapter 11: Enchanted Palace II
Chapter 12: Private Detective
Chapter 13: The Bodies in the Library
Chapter 14: Gentlemen’s Club
Chapter 15: Transformation/Forgetting
Chapter 16: No Wonder Alice
Chapter 17: Apocalypse IV
Chapter 18: Homecoming
Chapter 19: Ailing Knight-at-Arms
Chapter 20: Church
Chapter 21: Revisited
Chapter 22: The Second Set
Chapter 23: Invitation to a Game
Chapter 24: The Cave of Dreams
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
BEFORE THE RUINS. Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Gosling. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by Nicolette Seeback
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Gosling, Victoria, author.
Title: Before the ruins: a novel / Victoria Gosling.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002138 (print) | LCCN 2020002139 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250759153 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250759146 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250783516 (international)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6107.O6774 B44 2020 (print) | LCC PR6107.O6774 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002138
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002139
First U.S. Edition: September 2020
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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