“Are you sure this is okay?” she asked, as Eve held out her hand for the car keys.
“What’s to stop us? It’s a public place. Better than a field belonging to some farmer.” Eve heaved the tent out of the boot and slammed the lid. “Come on. Time to open that whisky.”
The whisky, it turned out, came from just up the road. Bladnoch, on the outskirts of Wigtown, billed on the label as the most southerly distillery in Scotland. It seemed to Olivia an odd thing to boast about when the point about Scotland was its northerliness, but the whisky tasted good. All they had to drink out of were the cups from the top of Olivia’s thermos, so the first tumbler-full had an edge of stale coffee to it. They drank it down – whisky was whisky, too expensive to throw away – then poured more, and swigged it with their sardine sandwiches, feeling its heat filling their minds as the warmth slipped out of the day.
Afterwards, they climbed back onto the stone and sat back to back again, taking turns to tell ghost stories as the sun went down towards Ireland and the cows snorted and huffled in the field behind them. Eve was a good storyteller: she had the right inflection, the proper conviction to twist cliché into fear.
“Nearer and nearer came the footsteps,” she intoned, “and with them the sound of ragged breathing, and every minute she expected to see a face, looming out of the darkness …”
Olivia could feel Eve’s spine pressed against her, the ticklish ends of Eve’s hair brushing her shoulders. It seemed to her, at that moment, as though they’d come a long way; as though home was far behind them, across that silvered sea.
“To friendship,” Eve said, when the sun had set at last, and the whisky bottle had been set aside too.
“To friendship,” Olivia echoed. Eve’s moods could shift as swiftly as a cloud blowing in off the sea, but the sentiment was sincere, Olivia knew that. And they were past the stage of minding each other’s moods: almost like an old married couple, by now.
They fell asleep early, their little tent nestled in the lee of the central stone like a sailing boat in harbour. Eve usually wriggled and grumbled for a long time in her sleeping bag, but tonight she was snoring almost as soon as they lay down, her hair furled in the hollow of her neck. Olivia lay for a while watching stars appear one by one in the strip of sky she could see through the door of the tent, then she too fell asleep.
She wasn’t sure what it was that woke her: a noise, or a movement; some premonition. She couldn’t tell whether she or Eve had woken first, but suddenly there they both were, alert in the darkness. Whispering in the almost-silent way you can in a two-man tent; in the way you do when you wake in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.
They were frightened but giggly at first, suppressing a bubbling urge to laugh or scream. The ghost stories lingered, heightening their apprehension and undermining it at the same time.
“Maybe it’s the Druids,” whispered Eve.
“Or the police.”
“Can you hear anything?”
“I’m sure I did.”
They pulled themselves upright with their sleeping bags still around them, as if they might offer protection rather than hampering their escape, and peered out through the door panel. They could see nothing except the outline of the stones, midnight purple against the dark sky, and a vague dimness over the sea in the distance.
“Shall we look outside?”
Olivia nodded. “Perhaps it’s the cows,” she whispered. “Perhaps they’ve got through the fence.”
They wriggled out of their sleeping bags and crawled out onto the wet grass. Still nothing: not until they took a few steps away from the tent and turned round. Then they saw the man, sitting on the other side of the stone. Right behind where they had been sleeping, a man sitting propped against the stone. A face, looming out of the darkness.
Eve’s scream was shocking, cutting through the night like a floodlight. Olivia grabbed her arm, wanting to calm her, hold her, shut her up, and as she did so the man leapt to his feet and ran. They caught no more than a glimpse of his face before he disappeared through the gate, a bulky figure clad in a dark jacket with fluorescent white stripes across the shoulders.
“He might have been completely harmless,” Olivia said the next morning, as they sat shivering in the car.
They’d drunk a lot more of the whisky after the man ran off; after they’d scrambled across the field to the Fiat and locked themselves in. Then they’d dozed a little through the dawn, side by side in the front seats, waking to throbbing hangovers and cold limbs and cricked necks, edgy with each other.
“He might not have noticed our tent,” Olivia went on. “We were round the far side of the big stone. It was very dark.”
“If he was innocent, why run off like that?”
That had frightened Olivia most too: not the man’s presence, but the speed with which he had made for the gate, the road, the distance. The sudden explosion of movement.
“We might have scared him,” she said. “He might have been – you know, vulnerable. In need of help.”
Eve snorted. “He didn’t look it to me. I reckon we should go to the police.”
“Better not,” said Olivia. “There might be a byelaw about camping in the stone circle. I don’t suppose they’d like it, a couple of southerners showing no respect for history.”
Eve twisted sulkily at the fringe on her cardigan. “We weren’t doing any harm.”
“Nor was he. He had plenty of opportunity. Who knows how long he was there?”
“Don’t,” said Eve. She was surprisingly squeamish, Olivia had noticed, about what might have been.
There was no water left and no food. No way, either, that they were capable of driving yet, even along these deserted roads. Olivia could feel the whisky sluggish in her veins still; she could smell it on Eve’s breath. There was nothing to do but wait out a few more hours here, though the magic had gone out of the stone circle now, the detour into prehistory a sour taste in their mouths. She could see the cows huddled together by the gate, big eyes looking expectantly towards the car. Waiting for breakfast, perhaps; or perhaps for a reprise of last night’s entertainment, the chasing and squealing and laughter.
“Let’s pack up the tent,” she said. The sun was up now, there was nothing to be frightened of. They could walk across those fields, down towards the Solway Firth.
Chapter 10
2008
The first Monday in October was cold and clear. Port Meadow had a sculpted look, its hollows and undulations sharply outlined before the coming of the floods that transformed the water meadows every autumn. There was hardly anyone about, and as Olivia left the path to walk across the tussocky grass she was conscious of a sense of space, and of the clarity of the landscape under the broad, pale sky.
Not all her days had a pattern to them, but this Monday walk had become a tradition. During the years she’d accompanied Benjy to school, she’d got into the habit of walking on across the meadow on Monday mornings after leaving him in the school playground. Whatever the weather, she would cross the lower sweep of pasture to Medley Bridge, pass Fiddler’s Island and Bossom’s boatyard and head up the far side of the river towards Wolvercote, with the cattle and the horses and, in season, the flocks of migrating geese for company.
Benjy walked to and from school with his friends now, swapping cards and brandishing sticks and banter. Olivia had regretted the loss of those half hours with her youngest son, as she’d regretted every rite of passage. It had spelled the end of a decade at the school gate, the daily camaraderie of motherhood. But she hadn’t given up her Monday walks. She found the routine comforting, as her days became emptier: it was a good way to begin the week, treading familiar ground and watching the seasons turn. A good time to think.
This morning, she was mulling over a phone call from the night before. The mother of one of her best pupils – a girl of seventeen, due to sit Grade 8 in the spring – had rung to explain that Gabriella was finding music practice too much on top of A levels, and want
ed to stop her piano lessons for a while. Olivia understood what that temporising meant. It spared everyone’s feelings, but pupils never came back, once they’d stopped.
When she’d first started teaching, she’d imagined nurturing children who’d follow in her footsteps, pursuing the path she’d abandoned towards the concert platform. She’d only take on those with talent, she’d thought. She’d been sparing her own feelings back then, persuading herself all wasn’t lost. Pretty soon she’d settled for more limited ambitions, offering her pupils a little musical understanding and the pleasure of modest accomplishment. With children of her own she’d had more sympathy with those who didn’t practise. But increasingly, piano lessons were just a phase, a fad to be dallied with then dropped, along with Pokemon cards, skateboards, diabolos. There was nothing special about music for most of her pupils, nothing distinctive about the experience except the effort involved and the slow pace of progress.
Olivia sighed. Another blow; another bit of life deftly undermined. So few of her pupils ever got as far as Gabriella. The occasional glimmer of promise was necessary, a leavening that made the venture bearable, but those with talent could be even more discouraging than the rest. It occurred to Olivia, as she walked, that she might not be able to bear teaching the piano for much longer. It was more of a career than playing folk songs at the Wednesday Club, but the modest income it generated certainly wasn’t enough to make it worthwhile.
She’d reached a broad stretch of ground where the grass had disappeared. The bare earth, cracked and swollen by the annual cycle of flooding and sunshine, had crazed into little quadrants like hopscotch squares. Olivia stopped. It looked dry enough to walk on, but there had been enough rain, recently, to soften the earth below that top crust. She took a couple of tentative steps, then a couple more. By the time she felt a tell-tale give beneath her feet she was too far in to jump back, and her panicky turning and twisting in search of a firm footing made her sink deeper into the mud. A couple of horses, grazing nearby, watched with interest as she thrashed around in the shallow bog before scrambling awkwardly to safety, her shoes and ankles coated in mud, and a long slick up one leg.
Her cheeks pink, Olivia walked a few yards in one direction and then the other without coming in sight of the edge of the mud flat, then she turned and headed back the way she’d come. Funny, she thought, glancing back over her shoulder: from fifty yards away, all you could see was a narrow streak of brown across the green swathe that reached almost to the horizon. You wouldn’t guess this peril was hidden in a fold of the meadow. Thankfully, no one had seen her floundering, and she was smiling as she made for the path again. The claggy weight of the mud felt oddly pleasurable, reminiscent of adventures long past.
Near Medley Bridge a couple of boys were leaning on their bikes in the place where older children hung out, especially in summer, to idle away afternoons jumping off the bridge into the murky water and kicking around balls and taunts and jokes. These two were probably truants, Olivia thought, but maybe they had some legitimate reason to be here. Her disappointment about Gabriella had resulted in an oddly indulgent view of adolescents in general; a sense of resignation, perhaps. Who was she to judge?
As she approached the bridge she caught the sound of a raised voice and a chorus of laughter. She didn’t hear what was said, but she felt the boys’ eyes turned on her, and their desire to assert themselves, perhaps to threaten. Despite herself, Olivia felt a sudden clamminess in her limbs, as though the autumn sun had been swallowed by a cloud. She walked on, measuring out her steps in ones and twos, keeping the far side of the bridge in view, and in a moment she was across it and entering the boatyard where launches and dinghies wintered under tarpaulins. She felt an absurd sense of elation, then of chagrin. They were only children, no more than fourteen or fifteen: surely she wasn’t intimidated by the bravado of boys the same age as her sons? She must be over-sensitive, still, to an aura of menace. Over-protected by the blameless conduct of her own children, perhaps – but that, she knew, was a dangerous line of thought.
Beyond the boatyard, the landscape opened up again into rugged pasture. The view of water meadows on either side of the river was broken only by the ancient willows set at intervals along the near bank, and Oxford was a distant strip along the horizon, the whole city reduced from this perspective to a narrow boundary between land and sky. Olivia stopped to draw breath; to draw a line beneath the bog and the catcalls of those boys. This was one of her favourite views, featured in a print Robert had bought for her birthday, and it never failed to offer solace. She liked to see her life, the hectic activity of the city, silenced by distance. She gazed for a few moments at the familiar outline of miniature roofs and steeples, then her eyes drifted to the foreground where a group of cows grazed, the power of their jaws matched by the benign mass of their bellies and haunches and heavy udders. She was almost close enough to feel the heat of their breath, with its sweet, fermenting smell of pulped grass.
Olivia stood for a little while longer, and when she walked on she had the sense that she was the only person in the landscape, perhaps the last person left on earth. Monday morning, and the world had emptied: everything was quiet apart from the whisper of the river, the occasional call of a lonely bird.
In a few minutes she passed Godstow Lock and came in sight of the ruined nunnery beyond. She’d walked further than usual this morning. Here was the road now, the winding lane that ran through Wolvercote and on towards Wytham Woods, crossing the canal and the railway line and dipping under the concrete arches of the A34. Heading for the hills, Olivia thought. She’d caught herself in the act.
A few hours later, Olivia sat in the little music room at the side of her house, a pair of pupils (two home-schooled siblings, as diligent as she could wish) sitting expectantly at her side as the afternoon sun slipped in through the little window.
The grand piano her parents had given her as a wedding present had always dominated this room. For years she and her pupils had edged around its broad girth, glimpsing their reflections in its dark sheen. But it seemed to Olivia today that there was something monstrous about the arrangement. There wasn’t enough air in here to absorb the vibration of the strings, or to allow any of them to breathe freely. What had she been thinking, keeping the piano confined like this, spending her working life shut up in this tiny space with it?
She looked out of the window, feeling the same panic that had gripped her briefly in the bog, and on the approach to the bridge. The ground was treacherous today, the familiar landscape untrustworthy, and it filled her with a dangerous sort of excitement. She had the feeling that she might do something rash; although the things you couldn’t undo happened when you least expected, of course, not because you willed them. She ought to have learned that much: that neither caution nor risk ever made things certain.
Outside, a pair of blue tits perched on a branch of the crab apple tree and squirrels buried conkers brazenly in the flowerpots among her dormant tulips. The garden was a comfort, she thought; always different, always full of life. Perhaps she should be a gardener, tending things that bore fruit year after year. Perhaps she should get an allotment, like Sarah, and grow vegetables none of her family would eat.
“Good,” she said, dragging her attention back to the child on the piano stool. He was playing a Mozart minuet, a familiar little piece rendered with flawless banality. “It needs some dynamics now, Thomas. Can you see that this line is the same as the one you’ve just played? It needs to sound like an echo. Softer than the first time.”
Thomas nodded, and his sister, watching him keenly, leaned forwards as far as the piano would allow, her pigtails brushing the polished wood.
“Have another go,” Olivia said. “You’ve got all the notes: now try and listen to what the music’s saying.”
She’d been wrong this morning, she thought: punctilious practisers could be more depressing than those who squandered their talent. There was always evidence of progress with these two – pieces
played faster and faster, learned from memory after a week or two – but never any musicality.
After another rendition she nodded. “Better,” she lied, and both children smiled with relief.
Their mother had been at university with Olivia. The only one of her contemporaries to end up in Oxford, and the last person she’d have chosen to be reunited with, as she’d said to Robert after the children’s first lesson. Robert had been at university with them both too – they’d all started off in the same hall of residence – but he didn’t remember Maya. His memory was more selective than hers, Olivia told him drily; he acquired facts, things he could use, and let the rest fall away. She acquired people, he’d replied, and she’d been flattered that this was how he saw her.
Olivia stood on the doorstep at the end of the lesson and smiled in a way she didn’t imagine anyone could be taken in by. “Have we got the Grade 2 pieces yet?” she asked. “Thomas could aim for that next term. And Elizabeth Grade 1, perhaps.”
Maya’s face sagged a little. “I’m not sure about more exams,” she said. “I’d like it to be – a more organic thing, if you know what I mean. All this measuring and grading. You know?”
“Of course.” Why did she feel that flash of disdain, Olivia wondered? Didn’t she complain about the parents who were only interested in the certificates, the marks achieved? She thought of Gabriella, wondered if a more organic approach would have helped her. Too much weedkiller, she thought, feeling an incongruous impulse to laugh. Too much fertiliser, week after week.
“I’ll have a think about some more interesting music,” she said. “Some duets, perhaps. Something they could play together. Would you like that?”
The children, secure now in their mother’s grasp, nodded shyly and leaned in towards her legs, the comforting swathes of her long tiered skirt. Olivia could hardly hold their mediocrity against them – or indeed against Maya, so earnestly principled. She had failed, after all, to transmit her love of music to her own sons, despite the patient hours she’d spent when they were little, singing songs and banging drums, trying to instil the basics of rhythm and pitch. She hadn’t tried to teach any of them the piano herself: instead, she’d sent them to a young man down the road whose enthusiasm had seemed to her irresistible. But one after another they’d rebelled, refused, charmed their way out of the process. Alastair still played the electric guitar and Angus had a drum kit; that was the sum of it. Not one with an interest in what they called her kind of music.
The Partridge and the Pelican Page 8