She brushes her teeth over the cracked porcelain sink in the corner of the bedroom, pulls on a clean nightie, then climbs into her unmade bed, drawing the sheets up to her chin, her eyes still trained on the spider as her thoughts meander back and forth, weaving and spiralling inwards from the present to the past before spooling out towards the future, like the web being cast in the furthest corner.
The days to come worry her: the wedding; the connection of the past with the present; the stirring of old wounds. She thinks of Ted across the valley, lying in another woman’s arms. With the thought comes a familiar sensation. It is the cold grip of panic, the same awful dread she had felt standing helplessly watching smoke and flames spiral into a night sky.
Kit shifts under the bed sheets. The darkness looms over her, heavy and oppressive. She could lie for hours wrestling with the insomnia that has become her recent bed companion. But rather than remain there sleepless for an entire night, her thoughts circling endlessly until the dawn chorus, she slips out of bed, pulls on a silk robe and treads the spiral staircase to the turret room where her desk with the computer and a chaotic spread of books and papers is laid out. She lifts a page and studies the messy paragraph written there, words scrawled and scratched out, thick black pen criss-crossing the page. Her latest attempt to return to the world of her imagination has stalled once again. She screws up the paper and throws it towards all the other crumpled pages spilling from the overflowing bin. Then, with a sigh, she settles into the familiar curve of the chair at the desk. She thinks of the spider, reeling out her web, strand by strand. She tries to sweep all thoughts of her family from her mind, as she switches on the computer to face the emptiness of the blank screen once more.
THE PAST
1986–1987
6
Before Windfalls – before Eve, and Lucy, and, of course, Margot – there was Ted and Kit, young and in love, sitting in a London flat staring at a small, square advertisement on the back page of a national newspaper. Somerset: Deceased estate. Characterful six-bed farmhouse with land. Offers invited.
‘What would we need with six bedrooms?’ Ted laughed, but something about the tiny black-and-white image of the stone farmhouse had captured Kit’s imagination and unabated, she phoned the estate agent the next morning and made an appointment to view the property.
They drove out of London two days later, Ted behind the wheel, quiet and thoughtful, while Kit sat beside him, buoyant and girlish with excitement. En route, they stopped at a small roadside cafe where they drank tea and shared a plate of egg and chips. ‘We’re not buying it,’ he said. ‘We’re window-shopping.’
‘Right,’ Kit agreed. ‘Of course.’
Back in the car, Kit wrestling with an ordnance survey map, they drove on through wooded vales, the trees resplendent in autumn livery before entering the village of Mortford, a quaint cluster of stone houses and cottages perched on a hillside above the River Avon. They passed a post office and a pub, following the road over a narrow bridge. The house, when they eventually found it, sat alone at the end of an unmarked lane, on the upper edges of the village.
‘This is it,’ Kit said. Ted brought the car to a halt, leaning over the steering wheel to take in the full effect of the attractive stone building, a solid L-shape nestled into the hillside with gabled windows and twisted wisteria branches splayed across its facade, the huge sky stretched in a canvas above a sloping garden and a fruit orchard leading down into the valley below where a ribbon of river wound, visible through the trees. The lawn was scruffy and littered with buttercups and puffed dandelion seed heads. The first of the autumn leaves blew in spirals from the surrounding trees. A fraying rope swing dangled listlessly from the gnarled branch of a sweet chestnut tree. It was definitely the place from the newspaper photograph, but seeing it there in front of them, the illusion dropped away. Ted felt his trepidation building. It was one thing to sit in a London flat with Kit and dream up a fantasy future, it was a completely different story to step into that fantasy and make it real. Looking around at the house and grounds, Ted couldn’t help but feel that the whole place echoed with a certain melancholy. ‘I wonder who used to live here. What did you say it was called?’ he asked.
‘Windfalls.’ They both sat silently for a moment. ‘This is the place,’ she said.
‘The place?’
She nodded. ‘I can feel it.’
Looking across, he knew from her look of serene satisfaction that they were in trouble.
The estate agent, a small, harried woman dressed in an ill-fitting suit with huge shoulder pads that dwarfed her slight frame, arrived moments later, gripping their hands with a surprisingly firm handshake before taking them through the house, pointing out damp patches and rotting floorboards. Ted knew she had already written them off as time wasters – a young bohemian couple on a country jaunt from London, playing make-believe – which in turn only seemed to make Kit more determined to tour the house slowly, hesitating at windows to admire the views across the valley, pointing out the honey-coloured hue of the Bath stone walls, the enormous, blackened hearth in the drawing room, the intricately engraved brass door handles. By the time he followed her up the curved staircase leading off the second-floor landing, Kit taking the steps two at a time, to a strange little turret room at the very top of the house, he knew the matter of them moving to the property was a done deal in Kit’s head.
‘It’s perfect, don’t you think? You could write up here.’
‘It may have escaped your notice, but I’ve not been writing much at the moment.’
‘Why is that? Why aren’t you writing?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s that saying, isn’t there, that art requires discomfort … pain, even. Perhaps I’m simply too happy.’
‘Too happy?’
He nodded and turned to her. ‘I blame you.’
‘I guess I’d better set about making you deeply unhappy then?’
‘Please don’t,’ he murmured, pressing his lips against hers.
Looking over her head through the small arched window he saw the overgrown garden and the fruit orchard sloping down towards the river. ‘All this land? What would we do with it?’
‘We can let it go to pasture. Let the children roam like wild things. We’ll give them a proper childhood, outdoors in the fresh air, swimming in the river.’
‘Children, plural?’
‘Yes. Didn’t I say? We’re having a big family. Monstrous. Kids everywhere, climbing the walls and swinging from the rafters.’
‘I’m not sure we’ve discussed it.’ He placed a hand on the gentle curve of her belly. ‘Rather like we didn’t discuss this one.’
Kit beamed at him. ‘I’m a great believer that sometimes you have to just dive into life. You wouldn’t want him to be an only child, would you? You’ve always told me how much you hated being an only.’
‘Him?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘Or her.’
Ted glanced down at the property particulars again. ‘It would take almost my entire inheritance from my parents, and a good chunk of my royalties. There wouldn’t be much left over.’
‘But our living costs will be lower out here than in London. You’ll have the peace and quiet you need to write. There will be new plays. Surely that’s the joy of creative genius?’ He rolled his eyes but Kit continued, unabated. ‘The house is called Windfalls. It’s a sign of good things to come.’
‘And what would you do out here in the wilds of Somerset? Won’t you miss London?’
She waved her hands airily. ‘Oh, you know me. I’m easily distracted. Besides, I’ll be busy making the babies.’
‘Not on your own you won’t.’ He kissed her again, feeling that familiar stirring, marvelling at the pull she had on him. He found it hard to deny her most things.
The agent waited for them out on the doorstep before locking up the house and driving away in a spray of gravel. Ted was already halfway to the car when he heard Kit calling. ‘Come on,’ she s
aid, leading him down into the tiered garden, through the orchard where the trees stood bowed with apples. She stopped near a rickety wooden gate and Ted came and stood behind her, drawing her towards him, his hands resting on her waist. She leaned her head back against his chest and he breathed in her scent – a fresh, lemon fragrance mingling with the first breath of autumn hanging in the air and the sweet aroma of the earliest windfall apples lying at their feet.
‘Aren’t you tired of the city?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you feel hemmed in? Rushed all the time? We can leave behind the parties and the people, all those distractions crowding our days. Here we can think, and breathe, and you can write. Besides,’ she added, ‘look around you. If it all goes wrong, we’ll make scrumpy and live off apples.’ She turned and smiled her most winning smile and Ted knew it was a lost cause. From the moment he’d first clapped eyes on her, there was something about Kit that got under his skin.
She had been standing almost completely naked on a stage in front of an audience of several hundred, the very first time he’d seen her. He had been attending the opening night of a new play – a pretentious, experimental piece written by an old college friend. Kit had been one of four female nudes, dressed in nothing but flimsy G-strings and white body paint, hired to stand motionless on plinths dotted about the stage, part of the ‘art gallery’ set design. Between each scene, as the lights faded to black, the naked actors would assume a new statue position on their plinths, then stand rigid as another scene played out. Halfway through the final act, as the two leads had laboured through a painful scene, Ted had heard the man seated a row in front state in an unfortunately loud whisper, ‘I think those statues might be the least wooden thing up there.’
His companion had agreed. ‘Though second from the left has a rather impressive rack,’ he’d added, making several people nearby giggle,
Ted had been trying hard not to gaze at ‘second from the left’ for most of the play. How on earth she managed to maintain stillness under such scrutiny, knowing at least a couple of hundred pairs of eyes were roving over her naked body, he had no idea. Wasn’t she cold? Bored? Her Zen-like trance was something to behold. She’s a serious artist performing in a theatre, he told himself sternly. Not just a naked body to drool over like a teenage boy.
Afterwards, standing at the cramped theatre bar, awaiting his turn to order an overpriced drink and wrestling with what he might say to his playwright friend Timothy that wouldn’t sound disingenuous, he had felt someone squeeze into a non-existent gap beside him. Turning, he had found ‘second from the left’ pressed up against him. He almost hadn’t recognised her, clothed now in a dress splashed with bright flowers, her dark hair loose about her shoulders, though the traces of white make-up still visible in her hairline convinced him it was her. ‘Congratulations,’ he’d said, unable to turn his body but acknowledging her with a tilt of his head. She’d given him a small nod, but hadn’t taken her eyes off the bartender. ‘I thought you made an excellent statue,’ he’d added.
‘Are you taking the piss?’ she’d asked, not even bothering to meet his gaze.
‘No!’ Ted had blushed, mortified that he might have offended her. ‘No … I … I thought … you were very … well … very still.’
‘Still?’ A small space had opened up at the bar and she’d taken the opportunity to shuffle in before turning to regard him.
Meeting her gaze, feeling her eyes sweep his tall, no doubt horribly dishevelled appearance, Ted had blushed. ‘Yes. Very. Is it difficult … being that …’ Looking into her hazel eyes, his words faltered.
‘Still?’ she had finished for him, one eyebrow raised.
Ted had experienced a strange lurching sensation, a little like stepping out and finding a void beneath his feet. He’d nodded, still lost for words.
‘I’ve had some practice.’
‘You practise being a statue?’
‘No.’ She’d looked at him, bemused. ‘I work as a life model at a local art college,’ she explained.
‘Right. Yes. Of course. Good. That’s good.’
The barman had appeared in front of them and Ted had offered to buy her a drink.
‘I tell myself stories.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You asked how I stay so still. I make up stories in my head, to pass the time and to distract myself from those annoying itches and cramps that creep up on you.’
‘What kind of stories?’ he’d asked, genuinely interested.
‘Oh, anything. At the moment, it’s mainly revenge fantasies. I’m taking great pleasure in imagining awful endings for the man who wrote this play.’ She’d leaned in. ‘He’s insufferable. He insisted on casting all the nudes personally, at his home address. He made me parade naked around his living room then thought I’d be so grateful for a part I’d shag him there and then on his nasty velour couch.’
Ted winced, horrified though not altogether surprised to hear of Timothy’s appalling behaviour. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I slapped him and told him I’d report him to Equity for sexual harassment if he didn’t give me the part. So it all worked out in the end.’
Ted gave her an impressed look. ‘Good for you.’
She’d glanced around and Ted had wondered if she were searching for someone to rescue her, but then she had turned back to him. ‘What is it that you do?’ she’d asked him.
‘I write.’
‘A playwright?’ She’d pulled back a little to appraise him. ‘Like Tim?’
‘Yes, though not exactly like him, I hope.’
The volume around them had risen to such a pitch that she had to stand on tiptoe to shout in his ear. ‘Would I know your work?’
At the sensation of her breath on his skin, Ted had felt a stirring. What was wrong with him, he’d wondered. He was no better than bloody Tim, no better than those old men seated in the row in front of him. He’d tugged at his shirt collar and taken another quick sip from his pint. ‘I suppose that depends on whether you’ve any interest in tragic works about dysfunctional father–son relationships.’
She’d narrowed her eyes. ‘What was it called, this play of yours?’
‘Lost Words.’
At that she’d smiled, a dazzling, showstopper of a smile revealing her even, white teeth. ‘I’ve seen it. Twice.’ She’d given him a begrudging look. ‘I was offered a couple of tickets by one of the lecturers at college, in lieu of payment. I loved it so much I queued for returns and saw it again the following week. It’s a beautiful play. Heartbreaking, yet somehow uplifting.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Ted Sorrell,’ she said, pulling his name from her memory.
He’d nodded and she’d held out her hand. ‘Kit Weaver.’ Her skin was warm but when he looked down at her hand resting in his, he’d seen more traces of the white body paint on the back of her hand, as if she were somehow fashioned from fine porcelain.
‘I read the piece in the Evening Standard about you,’ she continued. ‘They said you were one of London’s brightest young talents. They said your follow-up to Lost Words would be one of the most anticipated theatrical productions of the decade.’
He’d scuffed the floor with his shoe. ‘Yes. Nothing like unexpected success to cripple one under the weight of expectation and self-doubt.’
‘You’re struggling?’
He couldn’t help his dry laugh. ‘You could say that.’ The conversation had faltered. ‘I like your dress,’ he’d blurted out. ‘It’s very … unusual.’
‘Thanks. I made it myself. From a pair of old curtains, would you believe?’
‘Yes. I’m sure my mother had the same ones hanging in her drawing room.’
She’d laughed at that, then knocked back her drink in one impressive swig, the ice sliding and clinking in her glass. ‘Shall we get out of here, Ted Sorrell? There’s a halfway decent pub round the corner and I wouldn’t mind going someplace else, you know, where the entire room hasn’t seen me naked.’
They’d stayed in the pub until last orders and afterwards, she had been the one to take him by the hand and lead him back to her flatshare. She had been the one who had pulled him onto her bed and whispered in his ear that if he didn’t make love to her that very minute she might die. She had been the one who, when they couldn’t bear to leave each other’s side the next morning, had invited him to Camden Market where he had sat beside her on the stall she ran with a friend, selling crystals and homemade dreamcatchers.
‘Aren’t they just overpriced lumps of rock?’ he’d asked, lifting a pale-pink egg-shaped stone from the table, feeling the weight of it in his hand.
‘That’s a piece of rose quartz. It’s a heart stone, filled with feminine energy. It will stimulate connection, self-knowledge and inspiration. It’s good for creative types,’ she’d added, with a nudge of her elbow. ‘You should buy it. I’ll give you a discount.’
He’d laughed. ‘That’s an impressive sales pitch. Did you make that up on the spot?’
‘No! It’s true.’
‘How do you know this stuff?’
‘Picked it up, I suppose. I’ve always had an interest in myths and legend, ever since I was a little girl. Ancient history, Celtic tales … I started a degree in ancient and medieval history a while back. Didn’t last too long though,’ she’d added with another shrug. ‘All those lectures and essays …’ She’d trailed off. ‘I’m not good with timetables and deadlines. I’m too much of a dreamer. I was the eternal frustration to my parents. They washed their hands of me a couple of years ago when I dropped out of college.’
‘So what is it that you want to do?’ Ted had asked. ‘I’m assuming life modelling isn’t the anticipated pinnacle of your career.’
‘Is that judgement in your voice, Ted? Do you mind that I take my clothes off for money?’ she’d only half-teased.
Ted had shrugged. If he were honest, he didn’t like the thought of others ogling her body. ‘Maybe a little,’ he admitted. ‘What would happen if you didn’t go back to the theatre?’
The River Home : A Novel (2020) Page 5