I was wearing my grey woollen dress, the one even slightly smart piece of clothing I’d brought with me. This was the first time I’d worn it since I’d moved to the Island; apart from at the café where I wore a basic black skirt which I’d bought for the purpose at Marks & Spencer, I had been wearing jeans to the exclusion of almost everything else. Even to supper at Chris’s, I’d worn trousers. Earlier, getting dressed, I’d reached behind the pile of T-shirts on the shelf for the tangle of tights that I’d shoved there when I’d moved in, looking for some with a pattern to try and liven up the outfit. My hand had touched something hard. I knew immediately what it was: the box with Richard’s bangle. I hesitated momentarily, then took it out and opened it. There they were again, those savage faces, their streaming manes. I remembered the afternoon he’d given it to me, making love on the sofa, and snapped the lid shut again, nearly catching my fingers. My instinct had been to take it out on to the harbour and throw it in, let the water swallow it up like the stinking swan carcass. That, though, would be a waste, I decided: it was valuable. I would sell it instead.
I went back into the sitting room now and lit the long candles on the table and the smaller ones along the mantelpiece. When I switched off the main light, the clutter of furniture drew back against the walls and the table became the focus of the room. I was straightening one of the napkins again when there was a gentle knock on the kitchen door.
Through the glass panels I saw Chris. He was wearing a tweed jacket and a pale-blue shirt, newly ironed. The lines of the comb were still visible in his hair. The scent of freshly applied cologne enveloped me for a moment as he kissed me hello and pressed a bottle of red into my hands. I poured him a drink as he eased a box of mint thins out of his jacket pocket.
‘Are those potatoes dauphinoise?’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘My absolute favourite – Miranda used to make them for me as a birthday treat.’
He leant against the counter by the washing machine and chatted to me while I got the last few things ready. He’d been asked if he would sell the books from a house over in Bonchurch, he told me, the collection of a retired professor from Southampton University who’d recently died. ‘There’re wonderful things. Mostly natural history, Victorian botany studies, all beautifully illustrated. The son’s organising it and I get the impression he’d like to keep them but he’s pressed financially. Collectors will go for them, though – a couple in particular – so I hope there’ll be good news for him.’
I covered the granary rolls with tinfoil ready to go into the oven to warm and listened to him talking. The house had felt different as soon as he’d walked in; it had taken on new life as it had when Helen had been here over Christmas. It was the ease with which he made himself at home; there was no awkwardness or standing on ceremony, just familiarity and relaxed conversation.
I was filling a pan with water for the asparagus when Pete knocked, and Chris let him in. The room contracted immediately: there wasn’t more than six inches between the top of his head and the ceiling. I put the kettle down and moved towards him. He was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket I hadn’t seen before, and underneath it a lightweight charcoal jumper with the collar of a pale-grey shirt just visible at the neck. It was ridiculous, I knew it was only the clothes, but he seemed different. He was smiling a little, an odd smile that seemed to concentrate in one corner of his mouth, but I found it strangely difficult to meet his eye. I hesitated, wondering whether he would kiss my cheek as Chris had done, but instead he gave me the two bottles of wine he’d been carrying and moved away.
All the chairs were at the table in the sitting room so he folded himself down on to the third step of the stairs. I handed him a glass of wine, making myself look at him directly. He was freshly shaven, I registered, before I glanced away again to where his big feet overhung the edge of the step. Chris was working his way through the guacamole I’d made, ladling it up with carrots and Kettle chips. Both watched me as I stirred the hollandaise. ‘Why don’t you go through to the table?’ I said. ‘There’s not much room in there either but it’s better than watching me get things ready.’
‘Not at all.’ The grid of lines on Chris’s forehead contracted, as though the idea had offended him. ‘We’re here to see you. We’re not going to sit next door and let you do all the work.’
‘I think what he means,’ said Pete, ‘is that we’re going to let you do all the work but we’ll talk to you while you do it.’
Having worried that everything in the house looked tatty, when we sat down to eat I had the converse anxiety that they would see how far from casual I’d felt about this supper and inviting them into the cottage. I hadn’t been able to iron out the lines on the tablecloth which showed where it had been folded in the shop. Hey, I imagined it telegraphing to them both, look at me. She bought me specially, you know. Life’s a bit different here normally. By the time we were finishing the asparagus, however, I’d started to relax a little, helped no doubt by the fact that we were already at the bottom of the first bottle. I glanced across the table and watched Pete’s hands as he buttered the last of his roll. I had rarely seen his hands still, I thought; they were always moving, touching something, holding whatever it was he was subjecting to his scrutiny at any given time. He felt me watching him now and looked over, and I quickly looked away.
They both stood up as soon as I started to clear the plates, and the casserole dish and potatoes were taken from me the second I got them out of the oven, as though I couldn’t be allowed to lift anything heavy. It was silly but I quite liked it, the slight cosseting; it made me feel unusually feminine, cared about.
‘Did you see in the paper that we lost another chunk of cliff at Brook in the week?’ Chris said, after much appreciation of the goulash. ‘It was all that rain last week – the clay was sodden. There’s been a big landslide.’
‘My brother found a dinosaur tooth there once,’ I said. ‘He was obsessed with fossils – we used to spend hours going along the beach. It was quite damaged, the tooth, but recognisable. He kept it on his windowsill till he went to college.’
‘I expect everyone will be out now to see what’s been uncovered this time.’
‘I’m amazed at the subsidence. I mean, I knew it was a problem but so much has gone. The car park at Compton Bay – it just disappears over the edge. You can see where the parking spaces were marked out but they’re only half there.’
‘And half the adventure playground’s gone at Blackgang – it used to be huge.’
‘It’s not just the back of the Island,’ Pete said, putting down his knife and fork. ‘The mouth of the Newtown River, the beaches there – they’ve completely changed shape even in the past ten years. That bit just beyond the quay’ – he looked at me – ‘the marsh with all the sea heather – that used to be a meadow, flat enough for cricket. The place is alive – it’s shifting under our feet all the time.’
I saw him shoot another glance at the casserole and offered second helpings, which they both accepted. Chris, I knew, had always reminded me of someone and watching the simple happiness on his face as he had another mouthful of potato, it came to me: it was Harry, an old friend of Dad’s whom Matt and I had loved, perhaps because he’d talked to us as if we were adults. He’d used to come round on Saturday evening once a month to play chess, and he and Dad would sit at the kitchen table with their chins in their hands, serious as Short and Kasparov, while I made them bangers and mash. I had a moment’s insight into how lonely Dad’s life must have been then; Harry was the only regular adult company he’d had, really.
Going back to the kitchen to fetch a serving spoon for the pudding, I almost bumped into Pete as he came down the stairs from the bathroom. He put out his hands, as if to keep me at a distance. Earlier I’d cleaned the bathroom and changed the towels. I’d put all my personal things – my toothbrush and deodorant, my make-up – away in the cabinet but now I remembered that, changing my shoes just before they’d arrived, I’d left my bedroom door open. G
oing up the stairs, he would have seen my bed. We looked at each other, neither of us saying anything. At the table in the other room Chris refilled our glasses and the sound of the wine was suddenly loud in the space between us. I ducked away, cheeks reddening.
The crumble drew more compliments. We finished the second bottle of wine and Pete opened a third. The woollen dress had been a mistake, I thought, conscious of damp under my arms and the flush which hadn’t faded out of my face. Though I’d left the windows ajar and there was no fire, the heat from the oven and two other people made the house feel close.
‘I had some good news yesterday,’ I said. ‘I’ve been commissioned to translate a series of crime novels. The editor’s emailed me the first one; I’ve only had a quick look so far but it’s good – really atmospheric.’
‘That’s great,’ said Chris, tracing the inside of his bowl with the edge of his spoon again. ‘Well done you.’
‘It’s a relief because it means I’ll have gainful employment after I finish at the café, too, when I go.’
‘Go?’ said Pete.
‘When the lease on this place runs out.’ I felt a spasm of fear. No – going back to London was impossible now. I’d have to find somewhere else, somewhere even further away. Maybe I’d have to go abroad.
‘And when is that?’ asked Chris, reaching over and putting his hand on mine.
‘The end of April.’
‘Six weeks,’ said Pete, turning a cork between his fingers and pressing his thumbnail into it.
‘Well, you can always come back,’ said Chris. ‘You can stay with me whenever you like – plenty of room.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, touched. ‘It’s funny: I miss London but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave here yet. I’ll have to get a dinghy to row on the Thames.’ I flashed Pete a smile; his lips turned up in response but mechanically: the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
‘Gloomy subject,’ said Chris. ‘Let’s talk no more about it tonight. Is that coffee I smell?’
‘It is. Would you like some brandy, too?’
‘Ah, a girl after my own heart.’
Pete poured out large measures. I sipped mine, feeling the glow it left in my throat as it went down. I leaned forward, my elbow on the table as Chris lit me a cigarette. The candlelight pulled us into a circle around the table, like conspirators or participants in a séance. I wasn’t drunk but I was far from sober. More than anything, I was happy, relieved that it had gone well: the food had been good, things with Pete were back on an even keel more or less, the embarrassment of last time smoothed over, if not quite forgotten. I knew, though, that it couldn’t last. It was getting late. The ferries stopped running at eleven and I hadn’t heard one for a while. I looked up and found him watching me, his eyebrows drawn into a slight frown.
Chris stood and put his napkin neatly on the table. ‘Well, it’s been a lovely evening and we must have at least another one before you leave us, Kate, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to slide off now. I’m getting too old for late nights and I can’t handle my booze like I used to.’
‘How are you getting home, Chris?’ said Pete, as we stood at the door.
‘I shall be absolutely fine, don’t you worry,’ he said, and before I could remonstrate or offer to call him a cab, he had disappeared up the passage towards the gate. The darkness outside seemed to gain potency as the sound of his footsteps died away and I shut the door against it.
Pete was behind me. ‘I should go, too,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to. Stay for another drink – if you’d like to.’
He looked at me, his expression unreadable. The strange silence that had bloomed between us in those moments at the bottom of the stairs came again. It was Pete who broke the eye contact this time and looked around the kitchen. Every surface was covered with dirty plates, saucepans, glasses. ‘Washing up,’ he said, going towards the sink.
‘Oh, don’t worry; I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘It won’t take long.’ He tipped the inch of cold water out of the bowl and turned the taps on, pulling his sleeves up and rolling back his shirt cuffs. I organised what little was left over, throwing it away or clingfilming it for the fridge. The wine had numbed me and everything felt softer, the edges less definite. Nevertheless, I felt the oddness of his being here so late, standing at my sink and doing the washing up as if we were old friends. The silence was gathering all the time, growing into the pauses in the conversation. At first, to keep it at bay, I talked non-stop. I asked about the boat: the longest trip he’d ever done in it, whether he’d ever go transatlantic. He answered my questions but not at length and eventually I stopped talking and let the silence wind around us. In the window over the sink our reflections found a rhythm, him washing, me taking the heavy dishes as he handed them to me, drying them, putting them away. I began to dread finishing, wanting it to go on. The silence was no longer something to ward off, but familiar, even comforting, as though we were in fact old friends, this evening just one of a hundred where we had stood together and washed up in peace. It wasn’t as simple as that, though: there was an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach, intensifying. Alice came into my head all of a sudden, the memory of how her voice had seemed to reach me through the mist up on Tennyson Down that day, calling me over to the cliff edge. I batted the thought away. It wasn’t just the unhappiness of the memory; I didn’t want her in the room with us now.
It took half an hour to restore the kitchen to normality. I heard the muffled sound of St James’s striking one and wondered whether he’d heard it, too. He upended the last bowl of water and it spiralled away. ‘I’m going to have that glass of wine,’ I said. ‘Would you like one?’
Afterwards I wasn’t sure exactly how it happened. I could remember hearing the lid of the metal dustbin in the front yard as he took the rubbish out and I remembered getting fresh glasses and walking back into the sitting room to fetch the bottle. We met again in the kitchen, at the same place in front of the cupboard by the stairs. This time he put out his hand not to ward me off but to stop me. He was looking at me, his eyes serious, and I found I couldn’t look away. The quality of the air had changed. It felt thinner, difficult to breathe, as if we were at altitude.
I was aware of him coming closer, the remarkable greenness of his eyes, and then suddenly he was kissing me. I took a step back against the cupboard door with surprise and banged my head. He put his hand there, cushioning it. His mouth was urgent. He leaned in, pressing me against the door, letting me feel the weight of his body.
It was thirty seconds, maybe a minute, but in that time I was filled with hunger. I grabbed the pocket of his jeans and pulled him harder against me, wanting to hold on, bring him closer and closer. His hands were in my hair.
And then it stopped. He stepped away from me and the look on his face was sheer horror. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry.’ He grabbed the leather jacket from the top of the newel post, yanked the door open and was gone.
The seconds that followed were like the pause after something valuable is broken. For a moment, the air around me seemed simply to hang, as if everything were freeze-framed and there might still be a chance to go back, undo what had been done. I stood motionless until, through the rushing in my ears, I heard the clang of the iron gate at the end of the passage as he flung it shut. The noise jolted the air, and time began to move forward again.
Chapter Twenty-seven
When I woke in the morning my first thought was that I had imagined it. It was so extraordinary, such a step outside the usual bounds of my life now: in London, yes, in the years before Richard, it hadn’t been unusual for me to meet someone and kiss them, even take them home, and then there was Richard himself, but that sort of physical contact belonged to a different era, a different me. Perhaps the whole thing had been a sort of drunken hallucination, born of wine and brandy and tiredness after running round all day getting ready. Then, though, I put my hand up and felt the back of my head where I’d bange
d it, the slight tenderness. Last night, I remembered, my skin had come alive where he’d touched it – my mouth, my cheek, my ears, my neck. I had felt the roots of my hair.
I hadn’t been honest with myself, I knew now. That afternoon on the boat with Alice’s jacket, hurting Pete had been the major part of my regret but it wasn’t all of it. I’d regretted jeopardising his good opinion: it had become important to me. I remembered the strange pride I’d felt that first time out in the dinghy when he’d said I was a natural rower, how pleased I’d been when I’d begun to understand the sailing and when he’d asked me out on the boat the second time. More than that, on Alice’s birthday, I’d begun to feel that he was offering a sort of friendship, inviting me into his confidence. And then I had ruined it.
The supper had been an attempt to get things right again between us. I had wanted another chance, an opportunity to make him think better of me. But more than anything else, I acknowledged, I had just wanted to see him again. I had been physically aware of him from the moment he walked through the kitchen door. I had watched him all evening – sitting on the stairs, big feet hanging over the bottom step; his look of concentration as he tried not to break the cork with the cottage’s cheap corkscrew; the way the muscles in his arms had flexed when he handed me the dishes. I had wanted him to kiss me. I had wanted him.
The Bed I Made Page 24