Every Vow You Break

by Julia Crouch

  The hedgerow that smothered the landscape hung low in all its late summer weight. Lara recognised golden rod from her own garden. But here it grew wild, as abundant and invasive as cow parsley at home. She thought she spied that, too, although it could have been hemlock. The greenery made Lara feel suffocated, and she wondered what it was like for Stephen, living this far out in nature. If their digs back in the village made her uneasy, then to be out here with nothing but hidden creatures and gun-toting hillbillies for company would be a nightmare for her. Sleeping at night would be very difficult.

  Then, as if pushed by an unseen hand, they burst out from the canopied forest on to a grassy plateau where an immaculate red barn stood sentinel by a big, white farmhouse. On the porch of the house, two Adirondack chairs sat cosily angled towards a large and pristine pond, overlooking a jetty with a small rowing boat attached to it.

  ‘I didn’t realise we’d got so high up,’ Lara said. Trout Island, which she could make out in the valley beneath them, nestled like a dolls-house village. A range of hills folded up and behind the specks of houses, fading out into a purple mist in the distance. Lara thought perhaps, if forced, she could bear to live up here, in this house, by this pond and this barn. Everything would seem possible up here.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Olly asked.

  ‘Leg, seat, mate,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Chill,’ Olly said, once more relocating his drumming to the window.

  ‘He’s got ants in his pants,’ Jack giggled.

  Lara stared at the map again. The clearing was well marked, the outlines of house, barn and pond drawn and coloured by Stephen. But the road continued on.

  ‘It’s a couple more miles down there.’ Lara pointed to a track leading off beyond the pond and back into the leafy arcade of the forest.

  ‘Down the other side of the mountain,’ Bella said.

  ‘I’d better not touch a drop tonight,’ Marcus said. ‘If we’re ever going to find our way back.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Lara said.

  ‘No, no. You relax and enjoy yourself.’

  Eventually, after much bumping and skidding on loose rocks and rubble, they arrived at a fenced-off driveway behind an unmarked set of gates.

  ‘This is it,’ Lara said. Marcus cut the engine and they all looked up at the fence and gates, crowned by coils of barbed wire. ‘This is Stephen’s land.’

  ‘Fort Knox,’ Olly said, whistling between his teeth.

  ‘But we have the code,’ Lara said, getting out of the car with her laptop and locating a keypad recessed into a small metal cabinet at the side of the gates. Feeling the sweat spring instantly to her skin, she punched the numbers Stephen had written beside the the map – ‘today’s code’ was how he described them – into the keypad, and the gates swung slowly open. Marcus drove through and, as Lara passed in behind the car, they closed behind her.

  ‘Now, keep going, and, after about half a mile, take the left fork,’ Lara said, after she had got back into the car. The loose road grated under the wheels of the Chevy as it descended steeply past a wild meadow and an overgrown pond full of reeds and lily pads – no neat boats or jetties here. The left fork took them into a thicket of tall, broad-leafed oaks.

  ‘Where’s the damn house?’ Olly said. He had opened his window, letting heat and dust seep in as he stuck his head out, craning to see into the trees.

  ‘Look!’ Lara pointed. Right in the middle of the forest, where you would expect it to be most densely packed with branches, a sizeable house stood at the centre of a clearing. They had not immediately seen it because it was almost camouflaged by its woody exterior of dark oak. Broad and sleek in a minimal style that whispered taste and money, the building was skirted by a raw wooden deck.

  Marcus bounced the car up to rest by a closed garage that had two tennis-racquet snowshoes hanging on it. He switched off the engine and they all sat there for a moment, enjoying the silence and stillness after the crunch and bump of the journey. Then the door on the deck opened and there was Stephen. Tall, slim, long-legged, he stood at the top of a short run of steps, his hands in the pockets of his linen jacket, smiling in their direction.

  Lara swung her aching legs out of the car. Sitting still for so long after her morning run had solidified them. She straightened up and took Jack from Bella, who had helped him out of his car seat. Then they crossed the rough grass to the house, where Stephen waited for them.

  ‘Welcome.’ He bent down to shake Marcus and Olly’s hands as the Waylands climbed up to meet him, then he kissed Bella and Lara on the cheeks. He was impeccable, Lara thought. No one would have suspected anything. He smelled of leather and pepper, exactly the same as she remembered.

  ‘Hello young Jack.’ He stroked the little boy’s cheek like a father. ‘Come on in, everyone. Well done for finding me.’

  ‘You’re pretty tucked away,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Believe me, it’s intentional.’

  Stephen led them into a open-plan space with a high wooden ceiling. What Lara noticed first was the welcome coolness. Unlike their digs, this place had efficient air-conditioning, stirred through the rooms by ceiling fans. A professional-looking kitchen occupied the first area they came to. A vast battery of heavy saucepans filled a shelf along the entire far wall, and Lara counted twenty different black-handled knives held to an oversized magnetic rack. Something in the oven smelled delicious – of meat and wine and garlic – yet all the surfaces were clear. The only other sign of any culinary activity was a pile of clean washing-up by the enormous double kitchen sink. So Stephen was a cook, and a tidy one at that – unless he had staff. But Lara remembered that strange Trudi saying she didn’t do stuff round the house for him, that he liked to do it all on his own. She wondered what Marcus’s place would be like if he lived alone.

  A long oak table stood in the dining area; a large black wood-burning stove and two enormous, embracing sofas dominated the living side of the space. Classily worn Persian rugs softened the dark wooden floors and bookcases lined every wall, the few gaps between them filled with contemporary artworks. Bella and Olly ranged around like toddlers in a room full of new toys.

  ‘Is that a Pollock?’ Bella said, going over to a long, splashy piece of colour.

  ‘Yep. And that’s a Kline,’ Stephen said, pointing to a block of black and white.

  ‘Alice Neel,’ Bella said, moving to a painting of a pregnant woman lying on a bed. ‘I love Alice Neel,’ she explained to Stephen. ‘I went to the Whitechapel show with school.’

  ‘I usually go for Abstract Expressionism,’ Stephen said. ‘But there’s something about her …’

  ‘What’s this?’ Olly said, pressing his nose up against a glass cabinet set into the wall. Inside, various stuffed birds perched in little stage sets of what Lara supposed were their natural environments. She went up to Olly and gazed in beside him. There was the bright blue bird she had seen on her run, and a hummingbird, suspended in flight beside a model of a flower.

  ‘Bird taxidermy,’ Stephen said. ‘You can pick them up in antique stores all round here.’

  ‘Cool,’ Olly said, popping a piece of gum into his mouth and chewing furiously. Lara saw Marcus bristle at this. He had a rule about chewing gum.

  ‘And that one’s mine,’ Stephen said, pointing to the blue bird. ‘Roadkill. I found her on the way up here one day and had a go myself. It could be better. Drink, anyone?’

  ‘Yes please,’ Lara said. She was reeling from the surprise of this place. While the man wiping invisible crumbs from the kitchen work surface was both the Stephen she had loved and the Stephen Molloy of Hollywood fame, a lot of what she saw here – the art, the cooking, the books – had taken her unawares. These were habits and tastes he had picked up since they last met. Continually seeing him in the media, she’d had the impression that, accent apart, he hadn’t changed in the slightest.

  ‘What’s your poison?’ Stephen said.

  ‘Do you have any red wine?’ Lara asked, perching on
the back of one of the sofas.

  ‘And for me, please,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Guys, take a look in the fridge and take your pick,’ he said to Bella and Olly. ‘There’s pop and there’s juice. Can you get me one of those organic colas while you’re at it?’

  ‘You’re not drinking?’ Lara said. This, too, was new.

  ‘Alcohol doesn’t agree with me,’ Stephen said. ‘Or rather, it agrees with me too much. I had to put up quite an argument against it.’

  ‘You don’t mind if we do?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s a bit like passive smoking – quite a vicarious pleasure for the abstainer.’ He poured two large glasses of red wine and handed them to Marcus and Lara. ‘Try this. Francis Ford Coppola makes it. Not personally, of course. I’m told it’s very good.’ Lara felt his knuckle graze hers on the handover. ‘Smells delicious, anyway.’

  ‘Just one,’ Marcus said. ‘Then I’ll stop.’

  Stephen picked up a tray with a couple of bowls of olives and crisps on it and led them outside, through a fly-screen door that slammed shut behind them like a pistol shot, making Lara jump. Bella and Olly followed with Jack in tow, and they all sat at a weathered wooden table. Lara noticed how the curved back of her chair cupped her. It fitted her perfectly.

  Jack pulled away from Bella and climbed on to Lara’s lap, curling into her and twirling his finger in her hair. In the stultifying late-afternoon heat his squelchy body was almost too much for her to bear, but she didn’t have the heart to push him away. She focused on the trees at the perimeter of Stephen’s lawn. Their branches stood still, with no dapple or flutter in their foliage. The air had a filthy yellow tinge to it and the cicadas bored into her skull with their electronic whirring. She looked down and noticed a small black fly working its way up her arm.

  ‘There’s a storm in the air,’ Stephen said. ‘We have spectacular weather here.’

  ‘Ow,’ Olly said, slapping his calf. ‘Little shit bit me. Ow. Again.’

  ‘Cry baby,’ Bella said.

  ‘No see ’ums,’ Stephen said, opening a slim drawer in the table. ‘You really can’t see them, but they give a nasty little nip. Here.’ He threw a small bottle to Olly. ‘Spray that on and pass it round. It’ll keep the bugs off.’

  They took turns to cover themselves in a citronella fug.

  ‘What an amazing place,’ Marcus said. ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘I built it,’ Stephen said, offering round a bowl of olives. ‘Not with my own hands of course. I bought this woodland, had the clearing made and built the house from the trees that were knocked down. All the stonework – the chimney and the central part of the house – comes from a small quarry on the land too.’

  ‘That sounds so holistic and simple. So environmentally sound,’ Marcus said, leaning forward rather too intensely.

  Lara, struggling with Jack, who was pulling at her wine-holding hand, hoped Marcus wasn’t going to spend the whole evening gushing. Keen to demonstrate his lack of issues about Stephen’s success, he could easily go overboard. He didn’t do moderation very well.

  ‘It sounds like that, doesn’t it?’ Stephen said. ‘But when I came to see how they were getting on mid-build, it looked like a scene out of a documentary on the decimation of the rainforest. They had to dig all these trenches through the trees to run the water from the spring and put in the septic tank. And I wanted the electrics buried too, so that meant even more digging.’

  ‘Are you here permanently?’ Lara said. Jack was now rubbing his head against her side, spreading snot over her green linen top.

  ‘Until at least next summer, if not longer,’ Stephen said. And, for the first time since they had arrived, he looked her directly in the eyes.

  ‘What about your films?’ Olly butted in.

  ‘They can wait,’ Stephen said. ‘There are more important things.’

  ‘Like avoiding stalkers,’ Olly said.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Oh Jack!’ Lara said, as Jack finally managed to upend her glass, adding wine to the snot-trail on her front.

  ‘Let me get you something,’ Stephen said, standing up and heading back into the house.

  ‘I don’t think he wants to talk about the stalker, mate,’ Marcus said to Olly once Stephen was out of earshot.

  ‘Just making polite conversation,’ Olly said.

  ‘Just leave it, right?’ Marcus said. ‘And take the fucking gum out.’

  Stephen came back out with a damp piece of kitchen towel and handed it to Lara. Again, for a second, their hands touched.

  ‘So Trudi said she helps you out here,’ Lara said to try to earth herself.

  ‘Trudi?’ Marcus said.

  ‘You know, she was serving the meat at James and Betty’s,’ Olly said, helpfully drawing Trudi’s scar line from lip to ear on his own face.

  ‘Ooh, yes. Ouch,’ Marcus said.

  ‘She looks well rough,’ Olly said.

  ‘Olly,’ Marcus said.

  ‘That’s because she’s had a rough life,’ Stephen said. ‘She used to be a dancer, got into drugs and things descended from there. Spent five years inside.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Fraud, I think. Anyway, she found God, put on fifty pounds and when she got out Betty scooped her up – they used to work in this cabaret in the East Village together, and they’re from the same part of Tennessee. She installed her in Trout Island as one of her charity cases. When I came here, Betty couldn’t imagine how I would cope on my own, so Trudi was sworn to secrecy and loaned to me whenever I need a hand. I don’t ever need a hand, but I send her off on the odd wild goose chase from time to time, just to keep everyone happy.’

  ‘Mummy, I’m bored,’ Jack said, banging his head against Lara’s chest.

  ‘Jack. That’s so rude! I’m so sorry for my rude, rude son, Stephen,’ Lara said.

  ‘Sons,’ Marcus corrected her, a stern eye on Olly.

  ‘Well, it is pretty dull, listening to grown-ups go on and on. Would you guys like to take Jack out into the backyard?’ Stephen said to Olly and Bella. He pointed to a grassy meadow that skirted round the side of the house. ‘See if you can find any snakes?’

  ‘Euch,’ Bella said. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Snakes!’ Jack said, jumping off Lara’s lap. ‘Come on, Lolly.’ He tugged at his big brother’s hand.

  ‘Take a stick,’ Stephen said. ‘There’s a couple leaning against the wall by the back door.’

  ‘Come on, weed,’ Olly said to his sister.

  ‘Oh God. All right then,’ Bella said, getting up and following her brothers. ‘But I’m not doing anything without a stick.’

  The three adults watched the children as they tiptoed through the long grass, taking each step with enormous care, peering down to look at their feet in case they got snake-lucky.

  ‘Great kids,’ Stephen said, pouring more wine into Marcus and Lara’s glasses.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Marcus said.

  ‘I envy you,’ Stephen said to Marcus.

  Lara looked up from her dabbing, but his expression was neutral.

  ‘But you’ve been the lucky one,’ Marcus said.

  ‘I think not.’ Stephen turned to Lara. ‘We should really put that top to soak,’ he said. ‘Or it’ll be ruined.’

  ‘It’s fine, honestly. Please don’t worry.’

  ‘No, I’ll find you a shirt to change into, and we’ll get some stain remover on it. It’s a beautiful top. You don’t want to ruin it.’ He looked at Lara for just one second, then he stood up. ‘I’ll be back in a tick.’

  ‘Great guy. Nothing’s too much trouble,’ Marcus said, after Stephen had gone inside.

  ‘He’s certainly very kind.’ Lara put her head down and rubbed the back of her neck, where the sweat had gathered at her hairline.

  ‘I’d rather be inside in the air-conditioning, though,’ Marcus said.

  They sat in silence, sipping their warm red wine in the stultifying heat. Somewhe
re in the distance, Lara heard a rumble of thunder. A tightening at her temples told her the storm was nearly on them.

  ‘There you go,’ Stephen said, coming back out through the fly screen, letting it snap shut behind him. ‘You can roll the sleeves up. I hope it’s OK.’ He handed her a Prada man’s shirt covered in a subtle geometric print. ‘It should go with your trousers. Look, the colour here –’ he pointed to the background, a dark olive green – ‘is the exact shade. Give me your top when you’ve changed and I’ll put a spot of Vanish on it.’

  Lara took the shirt, amazed not only at his kindness, but also at the way he had noticed what she was wearing and the thought he had put into choosing the colour.

  ‘Use my room to change in,’ he said. ‘Just go up the stairs and take the first right.’

  She went inside and again the damn fly screen slammed shut behind her, making the skin on her face prickle with shock. The ceiling fan turned, cooling the interior, and whatever was cooking in the oven made the place smell like coming home. Stephen had a real touch; there was comfort here, and order. And for a man to have a bottle of Vanish, let alone know how to use it, astounded her. If she didn’t know better, she would have given more credence to the ‘Stephen Molloy is gay’ rumours that buzzed from time to time around the celebrity gossip magazines she read in her dentist’s waiting room. But here he was, welcome – if rare – proof that a straight man could be domestically competent.

  ‘What-if,’ he had said.

  Wasn’t she just getting carried away? What though, she thought as she climbed the dark, polished wooden staircase that turned on a square in the centre of the house, what if she hadn’t found out she was pregnant by Marcus? What if the twins had never happened?

  She stopped on the half-landing and held Stephen’s shirt to her face, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of him. He had been the love of her life. She had known it back then, and she realised now that she knew it still.

  But then things might have gone differently had they been able to stay together. She remembered a story about a pre-Monica Lewinsky Hillary Clinton driving into a gas station where she was served by an ex-boyfriend. ‘Imagine,’ the guy said. ‘If we’d married, you would have been the gas station guy’s wife.’