‘Any luck finding that leaflet?’ said Bea, rearranging her books and computer on the stone surface.
‘Nope.’ Juliet climbed down, gingerly. ‘There’s loads of apples up here. You must make sure the others don’t climb up and knock them off. You understand?’
Bea squirmed in her chair, her good mood evaporated. ‘Of course I will. I’m not stupid. Can the Dovecote be my place, Mum? My special place? Please?’
‘Um – we’ll see. The winters here are really cold,’ Juliet said, her mind still on Sam Hamilton and feeling rather sick at the thought of heating bills and those old windows.
‘I know, I know. I found an old cashmere jumper of your granny’s up in the Birdsnest. Wrapped in plastic so no moths get to it, clever, huh? And we could. . . maybe. . . couldn’t we run a socket out here? So I could have a light, and a radiator?’
‘We’ll see. When I’ve got some spare cash. It’ll be pretty chilly, you might not want to leave your computer in here overnight.’
Bea folded her arms. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be safe around here? Isn’t that why we moved?’
‘It’s safe, I’m sure, but the computer might freeze in the night. It happens.’
‘Oh. Well, I’ll burn a fire. That’s what they used to do in the olden days, didn’t they?’
Juliet peered doubtfully up at the ancient mellow-gold stone of the chimney. The Dovecote was actually an old banqueting house where guests would repair after supper to eat sweetmeats and listen to music, the last relic of a formerly great Elizabeth manor which had been demolished to build Nightingale House. ‘God knows when it was last swept, I don’t remember Grandi ever burning anything in it.’
‘Wasn’t there, like, supposedly a huge fire that destroyed that painting?’
‘Yes, you’re quite right. But it wasn’t in the fireplace.’ She indicated with one scuffed Converse exactly where she was standing, a purple-red circle staining the stone floor around her. ‘That’s the mark the fire made. Right there.’ They stared at it in silence. ‘Fires in here make me a bit uneasy, that’s why. Besides, we’ve no money for logs.’
‘“We’ve no money for logs, Father, and Tiny Tim coughs something terrible.” Oh come off it, Mum.’
Juliet gave a hollow laugh. ‘Logs are expensive. Unless you chop down trees and dry the wood out, and we haven’t had time to do that yet with the rain . . .’ Bea snorted with derision. Juliet said mildly, ‘I don’t enjoy saying all this, you know.’
Bea moved her feet around in the chair so that she was facing her mother. ‘It’s the one bit of this stupid house I like, so of course you want to take it away from me.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. I exist to make your life hard and difficult.’
Bea had swung away from her. In a quiet voice she said, ‘You joke about everything. You pretend everything’s fine. I want to talk to you and you make things into a joke. It’s not a joke, sometimes.’
‘I have to make a joke of it otherwise . . .’
‘What?’
‘I have to.’ Juliet looked at the darkened floor again. ‘Oh, Bea. Tell me what you want to talk about. Anything. Anything at all.’
‘No, it’s OK. I’m busy. Please, Mum, can you just leave me alone?’ She half turned her head again, and gave her a bright smile. ‘Thanks. Here, take your book.’
Chapter Seventeen
Hi ju. I heard u moved back to the birdsnest hows that going?! In Jamaica atm but coming back in summer. Be great to catch up. Ev
Hi ev. So great to hear from you! Your mum said you were a gardener now, that is so great. please say you’ll help me when you come back, as you may remember this place is pretty wild . . . x
Hit me up what you want to know
What should I be doing atm? I read an article which said I should be kuching. I don’t know what that is. Also Grandi said to cut the dahlias but she didn’t say how much. Basically not sure what to do for winter
Mulching not kuching stupid auto-correct
Don’t worry about mulching or kuching it can wait another year – dahlias need trimming of foliage to about 3–4 inches then storaging somewhere cold and dry in sand. What else?
Wilderness is a mess the leaves are rotten and stink now it’s nearly november and there’s slime all over the ground bc rain.
OK. Rake up the leaves as much as you can. And on the grass, leaving leaves on grass stops light getting to them. Cut back the foliage. Get some cheap bulbs, grape hyacinth / narcissus / anemones / crocus plant them where you can. Get that earth open to the air not covered with decay. Honestly if u spend 10 mins planting bulbs now you’ll be glad in jan / feb. see u soon
I’ve done some of this already, that’s honestly so helpful, thank you! How are you getting on? x
Matt and Juliet met in what was then referred to as a Bar Stroke Club just after midnight on New Year’s Day, 1999. Prince was playing loudly in the background, and they were serving Cosmopolitans for 99p, and if either realised this was a pretty cheesy beginning they never said it. They never said the bar was loud and sweaty, and they were both drunk and slept with each other that night without remembering it the next day. They never said one of them was sick on the way home, or that the next morning they couldn’t remember the other one’s name. They reimagined it, as one does, refashioning the myth so it fitted what came afterwards.
When they got engaged, a pregnant Juliet went back to the bar, a lurid pink building in Fulham Broadway, and took a photo which she had framed along with the front page of The Times, 1 January 1999, an exclusive detailing how in three years’ time Britain would adopt the euro. It hung in the kitchen in Dulcie Street, and so they were able to tell the children later: we met then, and there.
Why they felt the need to mythologise it Juliet was afterwards never quite sure, but Matt was obsessed with symbols and outward signifiers: personalised Christmas cards, family portraits in silver frames. Juliet, having grown up surrounded by symbols and meanings, couldn’t really care less. Early on, he laughed at her low-key approach to life, but it was true; she didn’t need anything else girlfriends were supposed to demand: bunches of flowers, anniversary presents, weekends away. She liked Matt; she fancied him; she loved how he stared at her, as if he’d never met anyone like her. He would wind her hair around his hands and pull her towards him, smiling; the sex was amazing, drawn-out, surprising, the two of them engulfed in awe at how they could make the other one feel. He was furious, passionate, mocking, hilariously traditional; he was like no one she’d known before, a curious mix of Italy, where his mother was from, and Kent, where he’d grown up. He aped the style of the age, of urbane Britpop art students, nineties Mod props – moped, manbag, a tweed cap and a gramophone. Amongst his records was an old 78 of Audrey Hepburn singing ‘Moon River’. She played it that first night with him and every night she stayed over for months; she could never again hear the opening chords and that tight, sad voice, without recalling the strange, happy thrill of those first cold winter weeks with Matt.
But one evening, not long after she had moved into Matt’s flat in Camden, Juliet found herself staring at the photo of the Bar Stroke Club hanging in his tiny kitchen. Without thinking she said aloud, ‘It is strange, isn’t it? That we’re not like Gav and Lisa, or Tom and Gem.’
Matt was clearing up after dinner, carefully sealing the packet of orecchiette. She watched him, smoothing it down, then putting it in the correct Kilner jar before stacking it neatly in the cupboard next to the other pastas. She had laughed the first time she saw him do it, little realising as one never does, that what now was a charming oddity would later reveal itself to be the minute opening of what would become a grand fissure. Juliet believed one could simply open a cupboard and fling a bag of pasta inside and if some fell out, well, so be it – it was dried wheat, after all, not soft cheese.
He looked up. ‘Well spotted. I’m Matt, you’re Ju.’
Juliet scraped the leftovers into the bin. ‘Ha ha. I mean, we have no background in common.’
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‘What do you mean?’ Matt was putting the herbs away now, each one in order. Juliet watched, mesmerised, then turned back to the sink.
‘Well, like these other couples we know. The ones who met at university or through mutual friends.’ She propped her elbows on the table, looking up at him. ‘It’s like there’s a sort of destiny about it for them, like it would have happened at some point. But it’s coincidence we met. Marie and I weren’t supposed to be at that bar, we only went in to use the Ladies.’
Matt turned back and, leaning against the kitchen counter, he folded his arms, and said, ‘We’re together now. It doesn’t matter how we met or if we would have met otherwise.’
Juliet laughed. ‘It’s just funny our life together is because I needed a pee.’
Matt said sharply, ‘Shut up about it, will you?’
‘Fine.’ Juliet had said nothing else, merely flopped down on the sofa and rolling her eyes a little, to disguise that she felt rather upset. She stroked her small baby bump, as ‘Moon River’ mournfully floated into the little sitting room. ‘My huckleberry friend’ – ‘my huckleberry friend’ – it always made her remember Ev, that, the boy picking wild berries in the hedgerow.
She didn’t think of it again, but a few months later, the day before their wedding in fact, she was on the bus home from work, tired and fat and gazing vacantly out of the window, when a chance remark by their friend Gav from months back came floating out of her subconscious into her conscious thought. ‘Best mistake he ever made.’ She realised Matt had gone to the wrong place that night too. And not at that moment, but afterwards, she slowly came to understand what his touchiness meant: Matt really believed that the fluke of their first encounter should never have happened. They should never have met.
‘Here – here’s the sitting room – we don’t need to bother with that now, we can come here after supper. Mum! Tell Sandy to get off! Here’s the dining room, it sounds posh, Dad, but it’s not, not really, it’s where we eat but we play card games in here, and Monopoly, there’s a super old version, we’ve got pretty good at it, Isla beat us once, can you believe? Dad?’
‘I did, Dad. I did. But I’m not into games any more, I’m into dancing, Dad, I want to be a dancing queen—’
‘Shut up, Isla, you can tell Dad about that later. Look, Dad, look out over the garden, that’s the Wilderness, it’s always been called that, did you know that?’
‘I did, darling. I remember it from when your great-grandmother was alive. I see not much has changed,’ Matt said, turning to Juliet with a smile. ‘Is that room up on the top floor still there?’
‘Yep.’ Juliet bent down to pick up a reading book and some socks from the sitting room floor.
‘Dad—’ Bea was pulling on his arm. ‘Look out of the window, you can see beyond the valley almost towards Wales, that’s what they say. Come and see Ned’s studio, Dad – will you? That’s where he burned the painting, you know, no one knows why. That’s where I hang out, Mum’s getting me WiFi in there after half-term so I can do my homework there—’
‘The whole point is it doesn’t have WiFi, I thought, Bea.’
‘Shut up, Mum. Dad, come and see, you’ll love it—’
Matt shrugged, and held his other hand out to Isla. ‘Come with us, bella? Have you kids had tea?’
‘No, not yet,’ said Juliet.
Matt stretched out his arms and rolled his head around his neck. Sandy watched him in awe. ‘The Friday afternoon traffic was pretty terrible. Can I take us all out to dinner? Is there a pub nearby?’
‘The Owl and Ivy, just down the road. That’s a great idea. Tell you what, why don’t you have a bath, relax with the kids and I can drive us there in an hour or so.’
‘Yes!’ the two older children cried, clapping their hands and dancing around the room. ‘Hurrah! A meal out!’
Sandy joined in, waddling from side to side. ‘Huwwahhh!’
Matt raised his eyebrows. ‘This from the children who were bored of Wagamama and Pizza Express.’
‘Country living,’ Juliet said. ‘Or rather, middle-of-nowhere-with-no-money-living.’
‘Tess’s children eat out about four times a week,’ he said. ‘Us, cinema night, their father, once with friends. It’s crazy.’
‘Lucky them,’ she said, glad he had mentioned Tess first. Perhaps this was going to be fine.
‘I know, Dad! Dad, come and see my room—’
‘In a minute, pumpkin. Just want to talk to your mum. You go and get it ready, OK?’
‘Sure!’ Isla said, and the two younger children ran out of the room, whooping with excitement. Bea melted away, looking at her phone. Matt turned to Juliet.
‘You OK?’
‘Absolutely.’ She smiled at him.
‘I’m going to be nice this weekend,’ he said, quietly. ‘I don’t want to be a dick. I’ve been a dick to you, Ju, I’m sorry.’
‘You—’ she began, then she shook her head. ‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not. We have to talk – about the future. Yes?’ She nodded, but didn’t look at him.
‘That’d be good. It’s great to see you.’
‘Me too.’ He cleared his throat. Oh, the familiarity of him, his square jaw and funny dimpled chin, his smell of rosemary and soap and sweat. He put his hand on one of the spikes of the coat rack.
‘I remember this,’ he said, stroking it. ‘I didn’t have children then. What a good idea, all these different hooks at different levels. Clever.’
‘It was Ned’s idea, most of the little things like that are his,’ she said, proudly. ‘And Dalbeattie, but Ned had most of the ideas, thinking through what a family wants.’
‘That window seat in the child’s bedroom upstairs.’
‘That’s your room. Well, it’s Sandy’s, but you’re sharing.’
‘I loved it . . . that’s great. I’d forgotten the nightingales on the roof.’
‘Yes,’ she said, pleased. ‘Wow, you remember it really well.’
‘Ha.’ He rocked on his feet. ‘Well, it’s sort of imprinted even more strongly on my brain cos of when we went to tell her we were engaged and you were pregnant, do you—’ She was nodding. ‘We left so suddenly. You can see the nightingales up on the roof now the leaves in the trees have almost gone. It’s limestone isn’t it?’
She had forgotten how much he loved design. They used to go out for day trips in the car, taking turns to pick a place to go – Ernö Goldfinger’s house in Broadstairs, or Ham House, and Dalbeattie’s one and only country mansion in Sussex. ‘It is. All of Dalbeattie’s papers have just come up for sale at auction, actually. There must be some stuff relating to Nightingale House. I’d love to see it.’
‘Who’s selling it?’ He was smiling politely.
‘Oh some museum in Canada has gone bust and they’re having to sell everything off. So sad . . .’ They were walking into the hallway. ‘Look. There’s a row of shelves in the sitting room, look – floor to waist high, then there’s cupboards and hooks for adults and look, this is my favourite bit, they’ve got birds—’ She broke off. Matt was looking at his phone.
‘No reception here,’ he said, and shrugged, and grinned. She realised for the first time they had no secrets to keep. He didn’t need to sneak off to call Tess. She didn’t need to hide the clothes she was bagging up and taking to the charity shop, the others she was secretly packing, the bills she was reallocating. If he wanted to call his girlfriend, Matt could use the bloody landline. Juliet grinned back at him. She handed him his overnight bag. ‘I’ll run you a bath. Take your time. They’re so pleased you’re here.’
Sandy did very well at supper, but by the time pudding came around he was so tired that, even though it was ice cream, he fell asleep. His parents left him where he was in the chair, curls bouncing gently as his head nodded, while Isla wrote a story in her exercise book about demonic dancing spiders released from a tomb in Egypt who take over the world by putting on an amazing show. Bea sat next to her father, a
rms linked with his, head resting on his shoulder, listening as Juliet and Matt chatted. About Gav’s new business, and Frederic, vague, pleasant talk of people they had in common.
They walked home from the pub in the end. Juliet had had three glasses of wine, partly at Matt’s urging, and it was a beautifully warm autumnal evening, so Matt carried Sandy back. They put him straight to bed, just taking off his shoes and trousers. Matt read to Isla, and Bea disappeared to the Dovecote, and Juliet tied her hair back in a scarf, and pottered around the kitchen. She opened another bottle of wine. A faint trace of golden fire on the horizon in the inky blackness showed the sun had just set. Owls called quietly, urgently, from the trees beyond the garden. From far away on the other side of the house she could hear Isla’s roars of laughter as Matt did his best set of voices.
Perhaps he’s like this with Tess’s kids, she thought. Perhaps it’s just the five of us together where the chemistry’s all wrong. Coming back, they had walked in their old family pack order: Matt carrying Sandy, Juliet with Isla, Bea in between. Were they still that family, even though they were apart? In the lovely fading light, the mournful stillness of the evening, surrounded by the quiet and beauty for which she had longed for years, Juliet was not sure.
‘Hello there.’ She jumped, and turned around. Matt was in the doorway.
‘Isla OK?’
‘I said she could read by herself for a while.’ He paused; she nodded, awkwardly, both afraid of what the boundaries were, wanting to be polite. ‘Her reading’s really come on, hasn’t it?’
‘It has. The school is great for that. They let her go into Year two and pick her own books. She talks about some people – there’s a girl called Emily who seems nice and likes the Egyptians, which is crucial, obviously—’
‘That’s great. Listen, Ju—’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks for having me here. I know everything’s still up in the air . . .’ He came towards her and put his wine glass down on the table.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 20