Our Dancing Days
Our Dancing Days
Lucy English
Lucy English’s third novel is set in a Suffolk commune in the Seventies where, beneath the blissful summer surface, the young inhabitants are caught in a downward spiral ending in tragedy.When Don, an aristocratic young Notting Hill poet, inherits a stately home in the depths of the Suffolk countryside from an elderly relative, he decides to move there taking with him an artist, Tessa and her best friend, Deedee. A menage a trois develops and as they form a commune and begin to grow their own vegetables, they live together in rural harmony. It is only when they decide to enlarge their group, bringing in strangers encountered at fairs and in pubs – the mesmerising and charismatic Jack, a single mother Helen and her troublesome six-year-old daughter, Beauty – that the balance is upset, tensions emerge and the friction builds to its horrific climax.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_e730dc1d-9dc0-59af-823f-2f270b4919e2)
Fourth Estate
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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Copyright © Lucy English 2000
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fourth Estate
‘Each Moment’ by the Incredible String Band. Words by Robin Williamson. Reproduced by kind permission of IMP Ltd. Lyrics from ‘Astral Weeks’ by Van Morrison.
The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781841152424
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007485390
Version: 2016-03-23
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_65ae318f-5b57-52f6-8334-859e52089951)
This was our dancing day
So even those with nothing to celebrate
Shook off their unfathomable gloom
And were lost with us in that meadow.
From ‘Albion’ in Spirit Level, a book of poems by Andrew Bell
CONTENTS
Cover (#u2a71a908-7370-5d07-bc62-f83e34a6693e)
Title Page (#u42097603-eb15-52f0-b59b-1cb330fe3cb1)
Copyright (#ulink_8284f8d4-04b0-55c5-980e-ea27d209c4e7)
Epigraph (#ulink_b1979928-74ba-56af-9885-d13ae67c9fd0)
Chapter One (#ulink_ad1b1856-45a2-5b5a-b7ba-1ba0b6e5556f)
Chapter Two (#ulink_c439431b-d2f0-575b-992d-a6c8798df0a6)
Chapter Three (#ulink_23c3eb24-ed55-5ef5-acd5-1c4b3b1620ce)
Chapter Four (#ulink_04e657e9-7f89-5a12-9f76-eec54c05e5b7)
Chapter Five (#ulink_949a1976-6d9f-5f9a-9724-780eb5cd514d)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8c668932-c1c2-5d7d-b0ee-0c0ef2f0c4be)
Bristol is built on several hills. In Totterdown there is a street that seems to cling to the steepest edge of one on a high embankment above Temple Meads Station. Tessa’s studio was on the top floor of a house in this terrace. From here it wasn’t difficult to entertain the idea that one was floating above the city like the hot-air balloons do on a fine day, but it also wasn’t difficult to imagine the whole street of houses slipping over the embankment; the gardens already lay at perilous angles. It was with this feeling of landing in front of the 10.45 from platform 6 that caused Tessa to stop working and look out of her studio window.
The ten forty-five gathered speed and whirred past harmlessly, but Tessa still felt she had fallen beneath its wheels. She also knew why she felt like this. She had that morning received a letter from her ex. It had just stopped raining and there was a break in the clouds. Sunlight fell onto the other side of Bristol, emphasising the lumpy forms of the university building, the glass edges of the city office blocks, and, pointing up between, the spires of Christchurch and St Mary Redcliffe; Bristol’s skyline was urban but not unpleasant. She could also see the parklands of Ashton Court and the gardens of Brandon Hill, for it was May and the trees were blossoming and fresh.
Smudgy sunlight on pinkish stone, pastel blue between moving clouds, it’s definitely a watercolour, thought Tessa turning from her window and back to her art, but her canvas was dark and red and large with jagged forms like a gaping dragon or a charred accident.
She poked at her work with a brush dipped in vermilion, but only half-heartedly. ‘It’s not savage enough, it’s blunted and dead.’ Letters from Murray always had this effect on her. Tessa’s walls were laden with other brooding canvases; she sold approximately one of these a year. The rest of her work lay in folders, because Tessa was an illustrator; watercolours of gardens, country scenes, Bristol sites, for calendars, birthday cards and coffee-table books. It was Murray who owned the gallery in Bath where she had first exhibited fourteen years ago and they had been lovers for eight of them.
Murray Maclean now lived in Edinburgh reinventing his Scottish roots. He had opened another gallery there, mostly for young Scottish painters. He still had the gallery in Bath but he showed only an indifferent attitude towards it, like he showed towards other left-behind projects. And Tessa was another project, she knew that. His letter was like a public relations handout, with a list of all the artists who would be exhibiting that summer, what cafés he had visited and who would be coming up for the Festival. His letter was like him, smart and to the point. Murray was in his fifties now, tall and elegant with thick grey hair. At the end he said, ‘If you’re up for the Festival Claudia and I would love to see you, that is if she isn’t too busy buying clothes at Baby Gap.’
Tessa stabbed at her painting again with red paint as thick as a placenta. Right from the start she had said to Murray, ‘I don’t want kids. Kids drive you mad.’ They had stayed with that but when he turned fifty women of child-bearing age became more attractive. Claudia was twenty-nine and had just had his baby in March. He met her some months after he split up with Tessa but that didn’t make it any better. ‘We’ll still be friends,’ he said, but he meant, ‘I’ll still sell your paintings.’
The other letter she had received that morning was from her agents and in an hour’s time she had an appointment to see them. Murray had introduced her to Wessex Artists so at least she could be grateful he had given her a living.
*
She left for her appointment on her bicycle and in her cycling gear. Her lodger in the basement, whom she had nothing to do with apart from collecting the rent, referred to her as ‘that dyke’; but what did she know, she was a chirpy English student, what did she know about sharp-looking forty-six-year-olds?
Tessa was sleek and wiry. Her hair, if it had been long, would have been corkscrew curly but she kept it short. It was dark brown, nearly black and the strands of grey at the front she dyed bright red. She wore black or grey, Trousers never skirts. Boyish casual clothes and sometimes a red velvet scarf. Her appearance was clean-cut and unadorned. She looked like she would prefer a day’s cycling to a morning in front of a mirror. She had the taut sun-touched skin of the very fit.
Some women might adopt the boyish look as a tease, ‘Guess what, I’m a real girl underneath,’ but with Tessa it was more complicated. Her appearance said, ‘I’m a woman, but I’m independent,’ or more usually, ‘Clear off’ – but Tessa was not a dyke.
Wessex Artists were on the eleventh floor of a block in the centre of Bristol. The view was panoramic. Tessa waited, watching squalling, reeling seagulls and rain clouds gathering. ‘They’re ready for you now,’ said the secretary.
Coral and Pumpkin looked Tessa up and down. Pumpkin sniffed as if Tessa had arrived fresh from a pig farm.
‘Do sit down,’ she said.
They were misnamed. Coral was round and squashy in voluminous florals. She had fuzzy hair. It was Pumpkin who more resembled a calcinated sea-creature. They were at least ten years older than Tessa, preserved perpetually in a mould made sometime in the fifties. Nice gals. Pumpkin’s suit was tweed-grey like her hair; she was small and neat.
‘Did you read the letter?’ Her voice reminded Tessa of metal tinging.
‘Sure.’ Tessa crossed her legs.
‘Well, what did you think?’ Pumpkin tapped her desk with a pen.
‘It’s OK.’
Pumpkin’s tapping became louder, her mouth pursed.
‘I don’t know what you expect me to say,’ said Tessa after a while; ‘I’ll do it, you know that.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Coral was becoming agitated. ‘It’s just that,’ she caught Pumpkin’s eye, ‘we had a little talk the other day, and eventually, after some time … it was a long talk, Tessa …’
Pumpkin glared. ‘It’s your attitude I’m worried about.’
Tessa laughed. ‘Come on, Pumpkin. I’ll do the work. What is it? Six Christmas cards, the suspension bridge at night, bunny rabbits?’
Pumpkin was silent. Coral fidgeted nervously, wobbling.
Pumpkin patted her skirt. ‘You see, Tessa, you’re good.’ She paused.
‘You’re very good.’ She picked up some papers for emphasis. ‘You’re in demand and yet …’
‘Your watercolours are lovely, Tessa, so sensitive,’ interrupted Coral, ‘… and yet, you treat it as though it were—’
‘Rubbish?’ suggested Tessa.
‘Your other work won’t sell, it won’t ever sell.’ Pumpkin’s voice was steely. ‘Especially now that Murray’s in Scotland,’ she added.
‘I … don’t … care,’ said Tessa like a two-year-old. It was a manner guaranteed to irritate Pumpkin.
Pumpkin sat up straight and smoothed her skirt again. She threw Coral a look. ‘Tell her about the assignment, then.’
‘Oh, yes, well, it’s really nice … last summer do you remember The Historic Houses of Oxfordshire? Well, of course you do.’ She smiled, regarding Pumpkin with caution. ‘They liked your work, said it really made the book … so this time they want …’
‘Seven more books to make a series? Eight more? Fifty more?’
Pumpkin made a hissing sort of noise.
‘Er, no, no, Tessa,’ Coral said, ‘just one more book actually.’ Her eyes were on Pumpkin. ‘They would like you to do six out of fifteen, so you’ve got the lion’s share. Pumpkin, she’s got the lion’s share, hasn’t she … Pumpkin?’
‘Yes,’ said Pumpkin suddenly; ‘six houses, three sketches of each, pencil and wash, there’ll also be photographs, you know the format. So you’ll do it?’
‘Oh, Pumpkin, we didn’t say where, did we? Oh, silly us. The Historic Houses of Suffolk.’
Tessa’s face became uncertain. ‘Suffolk?’
‘Yes, you know, in the east, Ipswich, Norwich …’
‘Norwich is in Norfolk, Coral.’ Pumpkin took a sheet of paper out of a drawer. ‘Choose the ones you want, there’s a description of each, ring us tomorrow when you’ve decided.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ said Tessa briskly; ‘I know Suffolk.’
‘Oh, do you?’ Coral said. ‘I went there for a holiday once, years ago, to a pretty place, it was, near the sea. Well, it was on the sea, actually, there was a lighthouse, I think.’
Tessa scanned the list without paying any attention to Coral. It was taking her a long time. Pumpkin looked at her watch.
‘Suffolk’s lovely,’ continued Coral; ‘Constable country. Well, I didn’t actually go to that bit, but I’ve been told it’s lovely. Where I went it was rather flat …’
Tessa handed the list back.
‘We’ll send you the brief,’ said Pumpkin. ‘Fleming Hall, Bedingfield; well, I thought you might choose that one. Hengrave, yes … Kentwell Hall and Long Melford – don’t forget to see the church … Lavenham, well, there’s plenty there … Heveningham … wasn’t that bought by an Arab? … St John’s Hall? Oh, I am surprised, Tessa, I thought you might have chosen Ickworth, or Alston Court, or Glenham. It’s the smallest one, you know, of minor interest.’
‘But it’s terribly old,’ said Coral; ‘actually it’s the oldest, isn’t it?’ She began to look through a folder.
‘It’s twelfth century,’ said Tessa, ‘but was enlarged in the fourteenth and then again to its present size in 1585. The windows of the great hall came from a nearby nunnery and are in two different styles, decorated and perpendicular.’
‘Oh, I say!’ said Coral.
Pumpkin studied the list. ‘It doesn’t say here about the windows. You know the place, then?’
Tessa stood up to go. ‘Actually, I used to live there.’
She cycled back across Bristol in the rain and up the slow climb to Totterdown. She kicked open her front door and clattered the bicycle in the corridor. Why the bloody hell did I take that on? I don’t want to go to Suffolk, and go to St John’s. Shit! She was soaking wet, and as she threw her wet clothes across the bedroom was confronted with an image of herself first arriving in Bristol after hitching in the rain. She had left Suffolk with nothing, not even a rucksack. She pulled on dry clothes. She was so angry she was close to tears, but it was a long time since Tessa had wept.
I left it all, I left the whole damn lot!
Don had kept sending her things in parcels, and then the money, but she sent it all back. She had bought this house herself with the money she earned from painting and knew every inch of it intimately, since for the last eight years she had scraped and peeled it down to its bones. The house was hers, absolutely hers. Murray had never lived there. Nothing here is yours! She had given up sharing things.
She sat on her bed staring at another of her bleak canvases. Ring up those two bitches, tell them to stuff their assignment! But the hard forms of the painting gave her inspiration; ice and steel, rock and stone, bone. Stone blunts scissors, scissors cut … what’s scaring you? she thought. It was not part of her present self to be emotional. Murray leaving, Claudia’s baby, she had coped with that. It’s a job. Paint the damn place then sod off. She thought how completely she had created her environment here, all hers, bare wood furniture, plain walls, cream, white. She knew everything in her house down to the furthest corner of the most hidden cupboard and her mind scanned these places.
Then she remembered the box she had not sent back. It arrived unexpectedly long after the other parcels and she kept it in her last moment of sentimentality. Under the stairs, seven years ago. She searched it out and took it up to her studio, which was the place she felt most inviolate.
Dusty, a letter – ‘Dear, dear Tessa, please keep these. One day I hope you will forgive us, Don.’ Soppy. Rubbish. She screwed it up. The box was full of photographs. She tipped them on the floor, her life in one heap. There were she and Dee-Dee, spades in hand, smiling in front of the vegetable garden, long hair, wellies, Peruvian jumpers and floppy skirts, stupid clothes for gardening. Don in the orchard in his dressing gown with a basket of apples, smiling. The dressing gown was his coat … St John’s in the snow and all of them outside, smiling. ‘We are the smiling revolution.’ A pile of happy people, summer fairs, winter bonfires.
It wasn’t like that, thought Tessa … And here were she and Don again, in white because that was their wedding. Shit. And she and Dee-Dee swimming in the moat. Tessa felt herself slipping again down the embankment. There were older photographs too; Swinging London, she and Dee-Dee in mini skirts, and now one in black and white, two little girls in a suburban garden, Theresa and Deirdre, puffed sleeves, buckle shoes, arms round each other, smiling …
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f3359f38-2f08-5bc3-b167-cfd874994fc7)
It was late August, the Saturday before the bank holiday. The weather throughout the summer had been indifferent, some might even have called it rotten, but Tessa did not care for sunshine for with it came droves of people, in summer clothes, soaking up the day like pink sponges, with noisy children, grandmothers, dogs and radios. And at the moment Tessa did not care for people.
She had now been in Suffolk for ten days. The rain had slowed her work, for although she preferred damp landscapes, it was more difficult to sketch satisfactorily under dripping trees. At Heveningham she tried for two hours to draw the ribbon wall, but spent most of the time in the orangery avoiding a thunderstorm.
She was in her hotel room in Bury St Edmunds surveying her work. She was quite pleased. They were rough sketches on rain-blotched paper, but she could see how they could progress. Remember, light on stone mullions, indigo shadows under cedar trees. She scribbled notes on the paper. Remember, wet skies, big clouds. The light, pale gold, could be pale green. Sienna-ripe wheat, barley’s softer … Tessa had travelled right through Suffolk, from the rolling willow-banked fields of the Essex borders and the Stour valley to the bleaker wheatlands of what is called High Suffolk, which is almost a joke since nothing except church towers are really high in Suffolk, to outside Bury St Edmunds, the hedgeless fields, agribusiness wheat deserts, no weeds, no poppies, no cornflowers. But it’s not got worse, thought Tessa, remembering exactly what it was like to be in the middle of a wheatfield, when the far end of it was ages away, and the trees by the ditches seemed tiny. And Tessa paused with this image of herself, ‘walking away from the Hall’, and as she saw herself becoming tiny in the distance, she felt uneasy and uncertain, for she had yet to go to St John’s.
I’m slipping, she thought, and she was tired, for she had worked hard, concentrating on forms and colours and angles and light and the present, always the present, the now of the image in front of her, nothing at all to do with memories. And Tessa felt sad and vulnerable. Ring up P. and C., said one part of her; oh weak, weak, where’s your steel? Where’s your ice? said another. And she thought of her stark canvases, but they were miles away on the other side of England.
She wrote a postcard to Murray. ‘Hope you enjoy the Festival. Couldn’t make it this year. I’m on an assignment in Suffolk. Love to Claudia and the kid.’ She had never told Murray much about Suffolk and what she did say was rather vague. Oh, I lived there in the seventies with some hippies. Her life before him held little interest for him. He was a man of the present. She licked the stamp. She had a picture of him in her mind at the opening of one of her exhibitions. Murray, in the centre of the room with a group of people around him. He was a tall man. He turned round suddenly to look for her and in that sweeping movement seemed to Tessa like a magician who could conjure up who he wanted, and make disappear who he didn’t want. She decided she wouldn’t write to him again.
She left her room and went to the abbey gardens; the hotel faced one of the old gatehouses. Bury St Edmunds was lively that Saturday; the market was on, the car parks were full, in the abbey gardens were people enjoying themselves in the manner Tessa found so repugnant. But now she was preoccupied.
The abbey, the burial place of St Edmund, had once been huge, the largest ecclesiastical building in Britain. Its size today would compare to a shopping complex, but there was virtually nothing left of it, eroded since the Reformation by weather, and also by townsfolk who used the place as a quarry; there were many houses in Bury built out of the abbey. Only a few portions of wall and excavated foundations remained. The lumps of stone, to Tessa, were baffling, a piece here, another bit at the far end of the gardens. A sign said ‘The Dormitory’ – did monks really sleep there? She couldn’t imagine it – where? There wasn’t anywhere. She stood in the nave by the high altar. Over her head should have been a vaulted roof but instead there was the Suffolk sky with hanging clouds moving slowly. It would have all vanished, thought Tessa, if someone hadn’t preserved it. It was time for her to start working.
From Bury St Edmunds she drove east and north, for St John’s was close to the Norfolk border. She had hitched up and down this road dozens of times but now the road was wider and faster, bypassing all the villages – the windmill at Stanton; Botesdale and Rickinghall Superior, so close to each other they were quite entangled; Walsham-le-Willows. She was watching the road signs. Harlesdon, with its wide, open street and Georgian houses. Ten miles to go. The road ran alongside the Waveney. Here she felt she must know every tree. Wortwell. It’s a job, I’m on a job. Piccadilly Corner. Wasn’t that where? … Six places, three sketches of each … Flixton, the old aerodrome, it’s been ploughed up. Well, the pub’s been tarted … Earsham … I waited for a lift there for three hours once. Then just before Bungay she turned off the main road with the lorries and holiday cars going to Lowestoft, into the lanes, into the area called the Saints, where there’s a local saying that once you get into them you can’t get out, and it seems true, for the roads meander irrationally and the signposts, if you can find them, are confusing. Left, St Margaret’s, right St Margaret’s. But Tessa was not lost. Here the countryside was open and the sky fell right down to the ground uninterrupted. The road swept round in a huge arc avoiding no apparent obstacle. This was the Saints. Left was St Margaret’s, St Michael’s, St James, St George, St Lawrence, the other St Margaret’s; and right was St John’s.
*
St John’s was barely a hamlet, four cottages and a farm close to the church. Once over the bridge there was no more of it, a truly uneventful place. But across the fields was a group of tall trees which the eye was drawn to as the trees in this area were usually solitary; and as the road turned again the Hall could be seen. Tessa saw it now and felt again the impact, for although the Hall was neither huge nor grand it was imposing.
Three of them in a car, cruising round Fulham on a hot day.
‘What shall we dooo?’
‘Come on, Don, you’re full of ideas.’
‘… We could go somewhere.’
‘Yeah, what a turn on.’
And then Don said, ‘I’ve got a super idea’ and Tessa and Dee-Dee fell about laughing. ‘No, honestly, a really good idea … I’ve got a sort of cousin …’
‘Wow.’
‘He lives in the countryside, in an amazing place … stop laughing … right, you don’t believe me, I’ll take you there.’
‘Don, Don, we believe you … mind that lorry! … Don, Don? Where are we going?’
‘Suffolk.’
Three of them in a car all the way to Suffolk, and Tessa and Dee-Dee sang ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and kept saying ‘are we nearly there yet?’ but as they got further and further from London the joke wore off. They drove for hours beyond Baldock, Royston and Newmarket, for this was when Suffolk was the sleepiest place on earth and nobody ever went there.
They turned the last bend and there was the Hall across the fields. There were more hedges then but it still stood out boldly. The sun shone on its church windows.
Dee-Dee scrambled next to Tessa to get a better look. ‘Oh, oh, is this it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he live here by himself? Oh, Don, I’m not smart enough.’
‘He won’t mind.’
The drive was a mud track full of potholes. There was a collection of crumbling barns. The place seemed derelict. They drove into the courtyard, where weeds grew between brick paving under a huge chestnut tree. Three of them, in crumpled London clothes. Dee-Dee pulled her mini skirt straight, but Tessa just stared.
‘What do you think?’ said Don. There were weeds growing on the roof.
‘It’s wild,’ said Tessa; ‘it’s like a dream …’
Tessa, in her cream Morris Traveller, turned into the courtyard. It was neatly gravelled, but the chestnut tree was as massive as ever. Its branches skimmed the roof of restored barns. In front of the house was an area of lawn.
She glanced at her brief. The owners were a Mr and Mrs B. Hallivand. Tessa had always used the side door by the kitchen but she supposed a Mr and Mrs B. Hallivand might not. The main door was in the porch, very like a church porch, two-storied with a tiny room above. Gargoyles gaped. The knocker was twisted brass, heavy. No answer. She knocked again and the noise echoed through the house. She tried the side door, no answer. Shit. She studied the brief. ‘Copy of letter sent to Mr and Mrs’ etc. ‘Thank you for your co-operation in the production of The Historic Houses of Suffolk’ (in red letters). ‘This book will be a unique document examining the most beautiful and,’ etc.
‘Schedule of work. The artist, Ms Tessa Foolks’ (spelt wrongly) ‘will arrive at your home on Saturday 24
August at one-thirty promptly.’ Typical Pumpkin. It was now one-twenty-five. Tessa waited and smoked a French cigarette, which was something she did in times of extreme stress. St John’s was locked and silent.
Shit. Stupid rich bums, I should have phoned! She much preferred working at a house not privately owned; at least she could cold-shoulder inquisitors. ‘Yes, thank you, it is very good and I’ve got one more hour to finish it.’ You couldn’t say that to an owner. They always hovered about making sure you included their favourite meconopsis, or got the patina exactly right on the hautboy. She waited and smoked another cigarette.
Damn you, she said, partly to the house, partly to the Hallivands and also partly to her invading memories, but she was holding them back, concentrating hard; this house, the present, this job. Except at that moment there was no job.
She stared at the house. The stonework had been recently cleaned and was buff-gold, the chimney stacks were straight, there were flower beds alongside the walls. Marguerites, artemesia, not bad choices, well weeded, probably had a gardener. To the left was a brick wall surrounding the orchard. The old apple trees leaning and twisted, they were still there, a good crop of apples coming, no vegetables, that was to be expected.
The grass was closely cut. On it were white metal chairs round a table, old ones, looked French. A striking herbaceous border ran down this side of the house; behind were espalier pear trees. The lawn fell down to the moat. From here it seemed as if the house were completely surrounded by water but in reality the moat was crescent-shaped, the furthest end of it under the tall trees in a dank wilderness. Between the moat and the Hall was a narrow strip of grass. Three doors opened out onto this. It was the most sheltered part of the garden, protected from the winds that always blew across Suffolk, straight from Russia. This narrow lawn led to another enclosed area. Tessa felt proud of the gardens. The Hallivands’ beautiful borders would not exist had she not spent nearly ten years in her wellies, chopping, cutting and digging. Gardens were the one thing Tessa still let herself be emotional about and she was actually smiling as she approached the rose garden.
Old roses with trailing stems and heavy flowers, dark red petals on the lawn. In June a deep musky scent only old roses have …
There was a door there now. Of course in August there would only be a few blooms, perhaps one or two on the Zépherine Drouhin …
There was concrete under her feet and what? … at first she couldn’t take it in: there was a swimming pool …
‘The peasants!’ shrieked Tessa. She couldn’t believe it, what about the Provence rose and the musk rose? The damask roses?
White concrete, flowers in tubs, a square of blue-bottomed swimming pool. Tessa felt sick. The Zépherine Drouhin still climbed the wall, but her garden, her special place, lying on the grass breathing in sweet rose air, her quartered roses of burgundy and darkest crimson, almost purple … There were glass doors and a patio with barbecue furniture. I’m going, she thought, but a car was coming.
A maroon Volvo estate turned into the courtyard. Tessa was storming across the orchard. The owner flounced towards her unstably on high heels. They met on the lawn in front of the house.
‘I’m so sorry, didn’t you get my message?’
‘No.’ Tessa was obviously furious.
‘How dreadful, it’s simply unforgivable.’
‘Yes, it’s unforgivable.’ This digs up roses, thought Tessa. It was tall and glamorous, hair unnaturally strawberry-blonde and shiny. It smiled determinedly. ‘You see, I had to go to Norwich, there was a snuff box in Elm Hill … Bernard’s at an auction … I phoned the hotel … It’s so awful when this happens, have you been here long?’
The owner wore silky peach and a face trying to be cheerful but visibly unsettled by Tessa, scowling, in black trousers and a tight T-shirt like a dark urban angel. But Tessa was less angry; she decided this person was not a malicious vandal, more an ignorant one with a high-gloss finish. It offered an elegant hand with pearly fingernails.
‘How do you do, I’m Mirabelle Hallivand, and you must be the artist, Tessa Fooks.’
‘Fulks, they always spell it wrong,’ and she smiled.
Mirabelle laughed and threw her head back, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Well, here we are … What a day … and the snuff box was a fake, I could tell at once … and you’ve been waiting, and the help’s off …’
‘I’d better start work,’ said Tessa; ‘I do have a schedule.’
‘Of course, but please, do come in and let me make you some tea.’
What Tessa noticed first as they stepped inside was the familiar smell; wet stone, damp rush-matting and woodsmoke. She always supposed people gave houses their particular odours, but St John’s seemed to have one of its own. The porch was not filled with gardening tools, flower pots and muddy boots; on the floor was an exquisite rug.
‘This is the great hall,’ said Mirabelle, opening a door in the panelling. There were tapestries on the wall. An ornate brass lantern hung from the rafters. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Mirabelle, showing Tessa an enormous sofa.
There was a grand piano, Persian rugs on the stone floor and large Chinese vases. Mirabelle brought tea in fluted porcelain. She perched on an embroidered chair near the mouth of the huge fireplace.
‘So, you’re going to paint St John’s.’
‘Sketches, really, I finish them off later, they’ll mostly be for page decorations. Has the photographer come?’
‘Last week, he was most charming … It’s nice to have company, it gets isolated here.’ Mirabelle was extremely thin, like a whippet, and had a whippet’s habit of trembling. ‘Bernard has to go to auctions, you see, he’s a dealer.’
‘Got a shop, has he?’
Mirabelle laughed extravagantly. ‘This is the shop. It’s all for sale!’ Her gesture included the entire contents of the great hall. ‘It’s much nicer for clients to decide in a relaxed atmosphere.’
‘Do people come out here?’ Tessa was amazed.
A tremble ran down Mirabelle’s arm into her teacup. ‘We don’t sell to the popular market, our clients are very discerning.’
Tessa quietly estimated the cost of the rug under her feet. To think they had slept on this floor huddled by the fire.
‘I’ll have to start work now,’ she said.
‘So you like painting houses?’ said Mirabelle, keen to continue.
‘I like painting gardens.’
‘Well, we’ve got lots of those here,’ she laughed.
Tessa put down her drink. ‘I believe there’s a rose garden here, with old roses. I was looking for it earlier … some rather rare roses, I thought,’ and her brown eyes fixed on Mirabelle.
‘Ah … well, yes, there was.’ Mirabelle’s bracelets jangled. ‘I’m afraid there was a rather bad winter … well, in the end Bernard had the swimming pool.’
‘What a shame, I love roses.’ Tessa stood up and Mirabelle stood up too.
‘It happened before … me … you see, I’m the second Mrs Hallivand.’
The light through the church windows struck her sideways, emphasising wrinkles under her make-up. In her youth she would have had petal-pink skin but she hadn’t aged well.
She’s as old as me, thought Tessa. ‘I see,’ she said. Mirabelle’s eyes were the palest blue; curiously, the more uncertain they became the more she smiled.
‘Well … well, I shan’t keep you.’
‘Yes, I’m better working uninterrupted.’
‘I could show you the house, the photographer was very impressed.’
‘Not today, I’m already late.’
‘And if you wanted anything, you will ask, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa opening the door. ‘Thank you, Mrs Hallivand.’
‘Oh, please, please, call me Mirabelle,’ and a tremble ran right through her, clanking all her jewellery.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_31452213-a2d4-5574-a207-bc93390c97e3)
Tessa took her sketchbook to the far side of the moat, where the cornfield met the grounds of St John’s. Here the Hall could be seen through the trees. This was the first glimpse one saw from the road, so it seemed the best place to start. Murray would be impressed by St John’s, she thought, and this made her smile because he would never see it now and when they were together he had shown no interest in this section of her life. He loved gardens and it was gardens that had brought them together. Tessa had advised him about the tiny courtyard garden at the back of his gallery. The gardens of St John’s would make him very quiet and put his head to one side, and say, as he did when he was interested in something, ‘Hmm, possibilities …’
The Hallivands’ improvements were not noticeable from this angle. Through the trees the Hall was as mysterious as it had ever been when weeds grew in the courtyard and the gardens were a knot of brambles and nettles. In the field the ripe wheat was prickly against Tessa’s legs and she began to draw.
They stood staring at the house feeling out of place and uncomfortable. Don, whom nobody embarrassed, was at a loss for words. ‘Er, um,’ he said, and it had been his idea in the first place.
Then a door opened and a woman strode out, short, squarish, a broad face and black hair scraped into a bun. She marched towards them as if they were dirty geese. ‘Shoo! Shoo! Off you go.’
Don ran up to her. ‘Molly, it’s me! Don’t you remember? It’s me!’
Molly was not impressed.
‘Oh, Molly, it’s me, I’m Donald, George’s boy, George and Hetty, the Bells, you know; Miranda, Donald.’ At each name he showed how high they used to be. ‘Frances and little Marsha, she’s twelve now …’
Molly threw up her hands. ‘Donald! It is you, and you so grown, when I last saw you, you were …’
‘A squirt, and I was always up the apple trees, and Miranda played the grand piano …’
‘She had a lovely voice.’
‘She’s at the Royal Academy now, she is, she plays the cello too.’
‘And Frances? Such a serious little thing, dark, not like you.’
‘She’s a scientist, she’s brilliant, she’s going to Cambridge.’
‘And the baby?’
‘Oh, Molly, you wouldn’t recognise her, she’s the beautiful one, blonde …’
‘Like you.’
‘Like Mummy. Well, Marsha’s twelve, she’s quite a lady,’ and they both laughed.
Tessa and Dee-Dee were still standing by the car, Dee-Dee tugging her mini skirt. Don pulled Molly over to them.
‘You must meet my friends! This is Tessa and Dee-Dee.’
Molly looked them up and down gravely. Tessa’s mascara had smudged into her cheeks.
‘Gosh! I don’t know their surnames … I met them a week ago … they’re at art school, London’s great at the moment.’
‘I’m Theresa Fulks and this is Deirdre Stallard,’ said Tessa, feeling the whole situation needed clarifying. ‘Don invited us to see his cousin.’
‘Yes, yes, and how is Geoffrey, I’d heard he wasn’t too—’
‘He’s bearing up very well,’ said Molly stoically; ‘rests a lot, we try and look after him.’
Tessa and Dee-Dee gazed at the overgrown garden and the sorry state of the barns. Molly was embarrassed. ‘Charlie’s back’s been bad, he can’t do much now, and I can barely keep up, what with the cleaning and all.’
‘Oh dear, Molly, I didn’t realise, I should have written. Have you got a phone yet?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Bell won’t have it … shall I tell him you’re here? He will be pleased, Donald.’
‘We shouldn’t have come,’ Tessa whispered to Dee-Dee.
Molly led them through the porch and into the blackness of the Hall. It smelled of wet stone, damp rush-matting and woodsmoke. Dee held Tessa’s hand. Molly opened the door in the panelling. Light through the high church windows streamed onto an old collection of broken furniture, stuffed animals under glass, piles of books, Indian dhurries and half-dead geraniums. The great hall was lofty and damp, there were broken window panes and on one of the rafters was a bird’s nest. Beside the stone fireplace, in which a few logs smouldered on a heap of ashes, was an armchair, and in this slept an elderly man in a dressing gown. They moved closer and Tessa could see he wasn’t really old but had the shrivelled yellowish appearance of the terminally ill. His dressing gown was brown checked wool, bought for someone once larger than he. His wrists were thin.
‘Mr Bell, Mr Bell,’ said Molly shaking him gently, ‘there’s somebody to see you.’
The sick man opened his eyes and smiled. He had a kind face, which even illness could not hide. ‘Molly? Is it tea-time already?’
‘No, Mr Bell, there’s Donald to see you, come all the way from London.’
Don rushed over and shook his hand enthusiastically, but Tessa could see how upset he was, he had not expected to find his cousin so frail. ‘Geoffrey, it’s been ages.’
‘Dear Donald, what a surprise. Let me see you, doesn’t he look like George, Molly, a blonde George.’
‘He’s brought some friends, Mr Bell.’ Molly pushed Dee-Dee and Tessa nearer.
‘What modern ladies … and you too Donald, quite the thing, and such a shirt.’
‘Oh, everybody in London wears this sort of stuff, Geoffrey.’
‘“With it”, that’s what they say now, isn’t it?’ He held Don and Dee-Dee’s hands. ‘How splendid of you to come all this way, and such beautiful ladies …’
Dee-Dee’s knees went pink.
‘Molly, make some tea, bring out your best fruit cake. Donald, find some chairs, and let’s celebrate.’
An hour or so later everybody was relaxed, laughing and stuffed with Molly’s cakes. She kept running into the kitchen to make more sandwiches. ‘There’ll be no more food left at this rate, Mr Bell.’
‘Never mind, Molly, tomorrow we’ll get Ram’s to deliver.’
Geoffrey insisted his guests be well fed. ‘I like to see ladies with good appetites.’ He offered Dee another slice of fruit cake. She was completely taken by him, he was absolutely charming. She gazed at him rapturously.
‘What beautiful hair you have, my dear, like the ripest wheat in the afternoon sun …’
‘Geoffrey, you are a one, you used to say things like that to my mother.’
‘Quite right too, Hetty was a beauty, still is. Her and George, so romantic, they were. They still write … Young lady, boys these days are not romantic. Is Donald romantic?’
‘Donald?’ And they screamed with laughter.
‘But tell me, George says you’re “dropping out” of Oxford.’
‘Yes, yes, I am, and I’m not going back … Oxford’s dead, Geoffrey, everybody’s so out of touch. I want to read about Ginsberg and Kerouac and Michael X, not dead people. It’s all happening now, in people’s houses, in pubs and on the street, Geoffrey. Art and literature isn’t stuffed away in libraries, it’s alive … Tessa and Dee-Dee, they’re artists, they know, it’s not just paint and paper, is it?’
‘No.’ Geoffrey was smiling knowingly.
‘It’s true, Geoffrey, it is. What do I get if I stay at Oxford, a degree, a piece of paper? I’ll know all about Milton and Shakespeare and Donne, oh they’re OK, but what about Bob Dylan … it’s poetry, it is … don’t laugh, Geoffrey … it’s got meaning and rhythm and most of all it’s got life … I don’t want a job and work from nine to five, I want to … Be … Read Thoreau, Geoffrey, and Tolstoy and Gandhi, and William Morris and Steiner and Huxley, they got it right … oh yes, and Jesus …’
Geoffrey was laughing. ‘And Jesus … what it is to be young!’
Don’s face was pink, but he wasn’t embarrassed; he was never embarrassed. Tessa and Dee-Dee exchanged glances. Don was the most un-hip creature on earth but he could be pretty inspiring.
Geoffrey was quiet. He poked the dying fire with his walking stick.
‘We were all young, George, Hetty, and I, we all awaited the imminent transformation of the world …’
Molly hovered behind them. ‘Don’t let them tire you, Mr Bell.’
‘Molly, you take good care of me.’
‘Are you tired?’ asked Don. ‘Shall I show the girls the rest of the house, I know they’ll love it.’
‘It’s not like it was, my boy.’
‘We don’t mind, do we, it’s years since I was here.’
‘This is the kitchen,’ said Don. China sink, one table, pots and pans hanging from the beams. ‘Hetty said it was impossibly archaic. We used to come here every summer. This is the breakfast room.’ An Aga, a long table, a sofa under a window which looked out over the moat. A stone floor. ‘The dairy’s in there, nobody uses it now. You see, it was a farm here before Geoffrey.’ Up winding stairs. ‘That’s Molly’s room, it’s private.’ Another bedroom. ‘This is the solar.’ A pile of old furniture covered with dust sheets, a huge bed, carved. ‘I think Geoffrey sleeps downstairs now …’ More bedrooms, more stairs, Dee-Dee and Tessa were quite lost. ‘I always slept in here, it’s called the chapel because it’s above the porch. In winter there’s ice on the inside walls, can you imagine? We only came here once in the winter, though … This room’s above the hall, my sisters slept in here.’ The ceiling had fallen in, there was more unused furniture. Don examined some. ‘I think it’s his mother’s, my great-aunt, it all came here when she died. Oh look, the hat stand, I do remember that …’ Up more stairs, down more stairs, narrow corridors, everywhere damp and dusty and crumbling. Don looked out of a window at the courtyard. ‘I love this place,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘What will happen when Geoffrey …’ Dee-Dee couldn’t bear to think of him dying.
‘I suppose it’ll be sold. George said it should have been sold years ago. Geoffrey could never really manage it. When we used to come down George used to help, but … I don’t know, Geoffrey wasn’t well, we grew up, Hetty and George, they’re getting old too … I like Geoffrey, I wish I’d seen more of him now …’
‘It’s so sad,’ said Dee-Dee and a tear ran down her face.
Three of them in a car all the way back to London and Dee-Dee sobbed copiously because Geoffrey was going to die. He had bravely walked to the door to see them off, leaning on a stick and helped by Molly, and that was Tessa’s last memory of him, a sick gentleman in a dressing gown.
‘Bye-bye, Don old boy, come again soon.’
‘I will, Geoffrey, I promise, I’ll come and see you.’
‘Goodbye, ladies, so pleased to have met you. Goodbye, goodbye,’ leaning on Molly and waving his stick until they were all out of sight.
Some weeks later, Don was with Tessa. She was painting a mural in a friend’s flat in Fulham. She was covered in paint and the walls and the floor were covered in it too, but it was cool, it was OK.
‘… And that’s the sea, where all living things come from, and these are the molluscs and the reptiles and the whole of evolution,’ said Tessa, splash. ‘And at the top is man in the clouds, and the sun is Ra the sun god giving out light and inspiration.’ Splash, a shower of yellow droplets splattered Don.
‘I’m going to see Geoffrey again,’ he said.
‘Good, I am pleased …’ Splash, red paint.
‘But I can’t take you this time, I’m afraid, you see Hetty wants me to persuade him to go to a hospice.’
Tessa stopped. ‘That’s heavy.’
‘Isn’t it, but the doctors say if he doesn’t he’ll die in three months, if he goes to a hospice he might …’
‘Linger for years … Shit, Don, Geoffrey’s pure, he’s real, it makes me sick when people want to destroy that.’ She splashed black paint angrily. ‘Why can’t people do what they want? Do you think he wants to linger in a fucking-stupid-full-of-morons-hospice?’
Donald laughed. ‘No, he doesn’t, he’s very single-minded.’
‘Shit! That’s too much black, it doesn’t look inspirational any more.’
Don wasn’t listening. He wiped the paint off his shirt. ‘I like Geoffrey,’ he said.
It was September, a year since they’d visited St John’s. Geoffrey was still there, dying, but comforted by his life’s clutter, Molly and Don, who visited him frequently. Tessa and Dee-Dee were established in London. They called themselves artists but didn’t really paint much; they never stayed in one place long enough. They had moved twelve times since the previous spring. They worked evenings in a dismal Greek restaurant off the Charing Cross Road, but this too was temporary. They changed jobs as frequently as their addresses. When they’d first met Don that summer they had been ingénue suburban art-school students, but they were now real hippies, much to the bewilderment and disgust of their parents.
Dee-Dee and Tessa’s families had known each other for years but since their daughters’ abandonment of all that was proper and respectable a certain coolness had developed between the Fulks and the Stallards, one silently blaming the other. ‘If it wasn’t for their daughter and her ways …’ But to Tessa and Dee-Dee their parents were uptight, straight and uncool. What did they know?
Dee had grown her hair long. It was ginger-blonde and crinkly, like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden. She wore round-rimmed sunglasses day and night, dressed in purple with a purple crocheted pull-on hat, and moved in a mist of patchouli. She was always in love, and the latest was called Jeremy. He played the flute, often, and had wild curly hair. He looked like a dissipated cherub and he was only sixteen. They stayed in bed most of the day.
Tessa was leaner, dark and frizzy-haired, which made her look Caribbean, another source of irritation to her parents; in crimson crushed velvet, with her tarot cards and brown gypsy eyes, her intense murals and love of things Eastern, she was known as a freaky lady.
They lived in King’s Cross in the basement of a partially demolished house. Tessa had painted all the walls yellow to cheer it up, but it was so damp she preferred to go out. Her ambition, if it could be called that, was to live in Notting Hill. Don, of course, lived in Notting Hill. His flat was the top floor of a house overlooking a square. He lived in some style. Tessa and Dee-Dee owned virtually nothing – their clothes, some records – but possessions seemed to cling to Don like burrs on a tweed skirt. ‘Doing his own thing’ was working as a porter in Bonham’s, but he also had the knack of finding pieces of junk in Portobello that later turned out to be valuable. His flat was a cave of Indian paintings, hookahs from Morocco (bought last summer), Turkish rugs (the spring before), seventeen different types of tea and seventeen tea-pots, books everywhere and on the ceiling one of Tessa’s murals, ‘The awakening of Consciousness’. It was here she spent most her time.
It was Tuesday but it could have been any day of the week, and what time it was was unclear; Don’s four clocks bonged hours and half-hours intermittently. Outside, yellowing leaves fell in the square. It was misty. Tessa and Dee-Dee were lying on the floor listening to Astral Weeks. The music was dreamy and melodic, Van Morrison’s peculiarly nasal voice felt right for their mood. Don’s room was autumnal too, brown, yellow and crimson. They were sad. Geoffrey had finally died, Don was at the solicitor’s with his father, the will was being read.
‘The Hall will be sold. Who will buy it?’ asked Dee-Dee on the goatskin rug.
‘Somebody,’ said Tessa.
They were smoking dope and were very stoned. Curiously the smell of hashish reminded her of the musty smell at St John’s. Dee-Dee started crying again, she had been doing this on and off since they first heard and that was a week ago.
‘Another time another place …’ sang Van Morrison.
‘Death’s not a bum trip,’ said Tessa; ‘it’s just moving from one thing to another like …’ but she couldn’t think what it was like.
‘We could have gone to the funeral,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Funerals are for family, anyway we only met him once.’
Then Donald burst in. Tessa and Dee-Dee were stretched out on the floor; the atmosphere in the room was definitely comfortable, but Don jumped over both of them and ran to the kitchen.
‘God, I need a drink.’
‘Don, cool it, what’s happened?’
He sat on the floor and poured himself a cup of whisky.
‘What is it, have you been busted?’
He looked at their serious faces and began to laugh. ‘Geoffrey’s left me St John’s.’
‘Far out!’
‘He has, all of it, the whole bloody place, birds’ nests and all!’
‘Oh, Don!’ said Tessa and Dee-Dee in unison.
He poured himself another cup of whisky.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Dee-Dee, all anxious.
‘Do? I’m going to live there.’
‘That’s wild,’ said Tessa.
‘Like Geoffrey … and there’s money, too, that furniture of his, it’s valuable, it’s not rubbish … and the paintings … Hetty and George got the best things, two Stanhope Forbes and a Morrisot, we thought they were sold years ago …’
‘Oh, Don, what are you going to do?’ said Dee-Dee again.
‘Anything, anything I like …’ and his face took on a familiar far-away look.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2bf202fc-0a8a-505d-a896-1d0ce3ca1c72)
So, Don went to Suffolk and Tessa and Dee moved into his flat. It was a satisfactory arrangement, for Notting Hill was the centre of the underground universe. Here were crash-pads for drop-outs, the Electric cinema and a macrobiotic restaurant. Here were happenings, music everywhere and enough marijuana to ensure everybody was stoned. Life at the flat was unscheduled, unrestricted. They woke and slept as they pleased and there were always people, thumping bongos, strumming guitars, dancing, reading poetry and smoking dope. To Tessa and Dee-Dee this was freedom.
Don led a nomadic life between London and Suffolk. He bought a van to ferry Geoffrey’s furniture to sell in auctions. He was trying to raise money to restore St John’s. The builders had started re-roofing, re-plumbing. What he was going to do with the place was a source of endless discussion; a hospice for the dying? ‘but Geoffrey wouldn’t have liked that’; a museum of Eastern Art? That idea lasted two days; a free school ‘where children learned through their own experiences in the here and now and adults could change their perceptions of reality …’ But somehow anything to do with schools meant regulations and planning permission. The idea that was most consistent was to ‘fill the Hall with interesting people all sharing and co-operating …’, but St John’s was only slightly more than a ruin.
The following August, Tessa, Dee-Dee, Jeremy and a person called Edgar Bukowski from New Orleans all attended the Festival of Communes at the Roundhouse. This was ‘a big informal information-exchanging and food-sharing meal and meeting for Communes and people interested in Communes plus (perhaps) chanting and other signs of togetherness plus (perhaps) Quintessence and Third Ear Band’. In long dresses, loons, beads and bare feet, they danced, drummed and laughed, experiencing togetherness and being and felt it was as important as Woodstock. Don was there too, conspicuous with schoolboy hair and brown polished shoes, talking avidly to long-haired anarchists, but his communal ideas were hardly being clarified.
The sixties were over. Hendrix was dead, Janis Joplin was dead, the Beatles had split up, the Isle of Wight was a muddy memory. Uncertainty and doubt were creeping into the earthly paradise. Tessa and Dee-Dee in Don’s flat were restless. Previously their constant moving had satisfied a need for change, a feeling that if they stopped long enough to accumulate possessions and familiarity with a place then they would be settling down, or, worse still, be straight. They feared acutely normality as displayed by their parents’ uneventful lives in deepest Middlesex. But in the year that the old money was abandoned and in came tinny decimalisation, they began to wonder, ‘What now?’
Dee-Dee, Jeremy, his flute and an alarmingly small amount of money hitch-hiked to India to find the truth. They went after an all-night party on a damp November morning. Tessa stayed behind. She felt there was nothing she could find in India she couldn’t find in Notting Hill; after all, India, the Taj Mahal and everything were just places. The real truth was inside. Her restlessness was spiritual; she became inert. The crashers at Don’s flat were inert too. They lay on the floor to music, usually stoned or, more usually, tripping. Edgar Bukowski was now a permanent resident. He was a chunky six-foot with long lank hair in a ponytail. He claimed to have met Bob Dylan in a jazz bar in New Orleans. He said, ‘Hey, Bob, I love you,’ and Bob said, ‘Man, that’s cool.’ It may not have been true but it gave Edgar Bukowski kudos. He and Tessa were lovers. There were other people who were Tessa’s lovers, both men and women, but during that winter Edgar had precedence. Together they blacked out all daylight in the flat, consulted the tarot, read Alistair Crowley, listened to the Doors and Captain Beefheart, and embarked on an inward journey to darkest parts. Here, the Queen of Swords was a fiery red and sliced the air with her weapon, the unforgiving chariot crushed them underfoot and the dogs of hell bayed to the moon as crayfish crawled out of a primeval slime. The walls of Don’s flat shook, grey-faced half-dead once-people moaned, Edgar’s face crawled like the crayfish and they made love, but it wasn’t love but something like hate, deadly and punishing.
A spring morning; Tessa pulled away the black cloth over the bathroom window. She had just been sick. The light came in cold and slicing. She didn’t know what day it was. Avoiding her reflection she stumbled back to where six or seven people were on the floor. There was no sound, the air was foetid. She pulled away the black cloth from all the windows but even harsh daylight couldn’t wake them. Then someone rolled over snored.
Angry, she began to kick them.
‘Hey, man, wha’s happening?’
Other people woke. ‘Cool it, what’s the problem?’
‘Get up! Get up! Get up!’
‘Heavy games, lady.’
‘Cool it.’
‘It’s a raid,’ shrieked Tessa.
At these words there was instant panic. They scrambled for the door, falling over each other. ‘Beat it, it’s the Fuzz,’ and they crashed down the stairs and into the street.
Tessa watched from the window and laughed. They ran down the road like surprised rats, not even noticing a complete absence of policemen.
Now she was alone. Edgar was not there. She vaguely remembered he had gone at some point in the night, but she didn’t care. She locked the door, which was something that had never been done before.
Feeling sick again, she hauled herself to bed. ‘Oh shit … oh Christ … oh God … oh Jesus …’
Some days passed. There was a knocking at the door. Tessa thought it must be Edgar and stayed put under the grimy sheets. She blocked her ears. Edgar was six foot plus, he could kick down any door. She waited.
But it couldn’t have been Edgar; the noise was weak, almost scratching, like a wounded animal that had crawled home.
‘Tessy, Tessy, where are you, where are you? Let me in, Tessy, please let me in.’
Tessa sat up. It was Dee-Dee.
There was much hugging and tears. ‘I thought you’d gone away, Tessy, I really did.’
‘Here I am, sort of … did you go to India?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow, and was it amazing?’
‘I don’t know … I suppose it was … it was weird …’
‘Where’s Jeremy?’
‘He’s in Goa playing the flute.’
Dee-Dee was very thin. Her eyes looked huge, like a lemur’s.
‘I had enough, I thought I’d come back …’ She began to cry. ‘Tessy, it was awful, it was worse than a bad trip, and we had no money, we had to beg, but there’s so many beggars … and I got sick, I don’t know, I ate dahl off a stall … I got sick in Afghanistan too, but that wasn’t too bad … Afghanistan’s great, the people are tribal and the women wear veils and you never see them … and the deserts … I mean I saw a real camel and a mirage. I did.’
She blew her nose on her skirt.
‘But India was so full and they’re all dying, even the babies.’ And she dissolved into sobs.
‘So you didn’t find a guru, then,’ said Tessa after a while.
‘Everyone in India’s a guru.’ Dee-Dee was hardly ever bitter. ‘We were supposed to be going to an ashram near Poona but I wanted to lie down all the time and then we went to Goa. I was pretty flipped out by Goa. It was like paradise, and we got sort of stuck … then I was in hospital, and when I came out I just couldn’t get into it any more … Jeremy kept phoning his mum to send him more money, but I didn’t want to do that, I’d rather beg … so I went to Delhi and met some Australians.’
‘Did you see the Taj Mahal?’
‘The Australians took me, they had a minibus, and the Taj was really magical and special, I wanted to stay. We waited for the moon to rise, and we saw a deserted palace called Fatehpur Sikri … Then the Australians took me to Kabul, they were called Rod and Mike, they were great …’ She sighed. ‘They wanted to see the inner land and the great statues but I wanted to get home. I met a lorry driver called Dick and he was going to Manchester so I took a lift.’
‘And here you are.’
‘I’ve just come back from Manchester. We were in a hotel. He wanted me to stay, but he was married, Tessy, he had kids, and, I mean, he was sweet and all that, but he was so straight …’
She lay on the bed. ‘I’m so tired, I want to stop moving.’
She gazed at Tessa’s painting on the ceiling, ‘The Awakening of Consciousness’, much obscured by smoke and dirt. ‘What about you?’
Tessa came and lay next to her. ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed too; ‘I just kicked everybody out and locked the door. I’m sick of hash and acid and junk … and people dossing … and Edgar … he’s heavy, he’s on junk, anyway, I suspect he’s trying to score …’
‘What shall we do, Tessy?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know any more.
They might have slept for a whole day or it might have been two. When Tessa woke it was very early morning and the sun was beautiful and the birds were singing, and she felt clear and pure.
‘Wake up, Dee-Dee, wake up.’
‘Tessy, what is it?’
‘Listen, wake up you mug, I know what we must do, I’ve just realised … we must live here and make it beautiful, like when Don was here. I’ll paint it and we can get pretty things.’
‘Oh, Tessy!’
‘And flowers and everything. We’ll clean it and it’ll be ours and we won’t have dossers …’
‘Oh, Tessy.’ Dee-Dee had started to cry.
‘There won’t be any Edgars or Jeremys laying heavy trips on us, it’ll be our space, we’ll do what we like.’
‘I could do knitting …’
‘And I’ll paint, and we’ll cook real food, not rubbish, and get strong and powerful … We’ll do it now, come on Dee, we’ll get some food now.’
And they bought six croissants and took them to the park and ate them by the boating pond, shivering in the spring sunlight, and Dee-Dee puked hers up but it didn’t matter, and back at the flat they began to clean and clear it, and Tessa sold all her hash and they bought paint and bleach and washing powder, and they scrubbed and scrubbed and Dee-Dee cooked a big pot of stew, and after two weeks she wasn’t being sick any more, and Tessa made bread and Dee-Dee started to knit a stripy jumper.
After two months the flat was how they wanted and Dee was becoming pink again. In the evenings they listened to early Incredible String Band and wept buckets and Nick Drake and wept buckets, and Astral Weeks and A1 Stewart and Donovan and Bob Dylan and all the songs of the innocence and peace they loved and wanted to re-create.
It was early afternoon. Tessa and Dee-Dee were not doing much but they were happy. It was May. Dee had picked a branch of cherry blossom from the square and put it in a jug on the kitchen table. Then Don arrived.
‘Well, this is very different,’ he said, looking round.
‘Don, I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I was up before Christmas.’
‘Were you?’
‘I think you were tripping … actually I think everybody was tripping
‘Dee-Dee’s here, she went to India and back.’
Dee rushed up and kissed him. ‘Don, is the countryside beautiful? India was awful and I got sick, and Jeremy’s still there, and Edgar left and never came back, and Tessa makes bread now …’
‘Tell us about the Hall, Don.’
Don laughed and sat down. ‘Oh, it’s still a wreck, but I love it, Tess, it’s going to be amazing. I sleep in the hall by the fire and read Geoffrey’s books and I watched the spring coming in and now summer’s coming, there’s martins under the eaves and a kingfisher in the moat, and five ducklings. There’s just me, Molly’s Charlie’s not well now, so they moved to a council house in St Lawrence.’
Don was wearing a pair of Geoffrey’s tweed trousers held up with braces. His hair was longer but he looked different from anybody else they knew. His face was fresh and healthy. Dee got bread and honey and they ate thick slices.
‘Are you down in London to sell something?’ asked Tessa.
‘No, I’ve come to see you.’ He smiled. ‘The flat looks good …’
Tessa and Dee had hung old lace at the windows, ‘The Awakening of Consciousness’ was painted over white, pretty china from the antique market stood on the kitchen shelves. Dee-Dee and Tessa wore thirties print dresses and coloured scarves.
Don nodded. There was something on his mind. Any minute now he was going to say ‘I’ve got a really good idea,’ but he didn’t, he finished his bread and honey. ‘So, Edgar’s gone. I didn’t really like him.’
‘He was weird, smack wasted him.’
‘Hmmm.’
Dee put on a record, I Looked Up by the Incredible String Band. Tessa rolled a joint. They sat on the floor.
… Each moment is different from another, each moment is different it’s now, ow, ow …
‘I’ve been thinking,’ began Don, and Dee-Dee and Tessa glanced at each other, ‘About St John’s. I can’t live there always on my own, sometimes I think I’d like to, but there’s money … one needs money. Geoffrey couldn’t do it and he had more money than I, and anyway, it’s selfish, isn’t it? I feel I want to share St John’s because it’s so wonderful, but then there’s another question, with whom? I’d like to start a community, there’s some already in Norfolk and Suffolk and they seem to be going fine. I went to see one and asked them “How do you know who the right people are?” and they said “You soon find out.” But I don’t want to make mistakes. St John’s is special, it’s got something, I suppose one calls it History. It would be a waste if unappreciative people lived there … There’s enough land, it’s got to be cleared, of course, but that could be done … What I’ve seen, the most successful communities are where people work hard, like Findhorn and monasteries. I’ve just been to stay at Downside, being Catholic does have advantages … the ritual, the prayer, the work, the belief keeps them going … but what’s our creed, “The road of Excess leads to the palace of Wisdom” … do we still believe that? Must we still base our identity on intensified experiences, tune in, turn on, drop out, wait for the next high? You see, I’ve been finding this out. The days and the seasons have their own rhythms, in the countryside one really notices it. In the town, OK … it’s a fine day. It’s sunny; it’s not, it’s raining, but since I’ve been at St John’s each day is different.’
Each moment is different from another, each moment is different it’s now, ow, ow …
‘Yes, that’s it. The leaves open in the spring, slowly each day, every minute there’s a change. When the snowdrops came out I cried, I did, it wasn’t sentimental, it was joyful. Winter’s dead, spring’s here! I never felt that in London … It’s medieval. Ancient people lived much closer to nature. The winter must have been long, long and dark, then the spring and summer. Wonderful! You don’t shiver any more … God, I was cold this winter, I was bloody freezing … but now, the hawthorn’s in blossom and the elder.’
He looked at the bough of cherry in the jug. ‘… and here I am in London.’ He smoked the joint.
‘I get fed up with London,’ said Tessa. ‘Parties and people talking, doing the same things, smoking dope, getting laid …’
‘But we’ve made it nice here,’ said Dee-Dee.
When you find out who you are, beautiful beyond your dreams …
They were silent. The record came to an end. Don’s face took on a distant look, reminding Tessa of a soldier on a war memorial.
‘Listen,’ he said, and they listened, to the electric hum of the fridge, the cars on Holland Park Avenue, an aeroplane, people outside …
‘What I hear at St John’s is timeless, it’s been heard since forever; wind, lapwings, ducks on the moat. Must I be the only person to hear it? … Come back with me, we’ll be the beginning, we’ll find more people. “Why may we not have our Heaven here and Heaven hereafter too?” Why not?’
They had not expected this at all.
‘Yes, you two, you’re prefect, I can see it … it’ll be hard work, but you don’t mind about that …’
They stared at him.
‘We’ll clear the land and grow vegetables. There’s two acres, we could be eating our own food.’
‘Oh,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Come on then.’ He stood up.
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Why not? I’ve got the van outside. All this—’ he glanced around ‘—Bring it. It’s yours, isn’t it?’ he began to unplug the record player.
Dee-Dee and Tessa in the middle of the room faced each other. Dee-Dee was becoming tearful. ‘Tessy, what shall we do?’
But Tessa was certain. ‘We’ll go.’
It wasn’t until they arrived at St John’s in the dark that they realised the enormity of their decision. Only the great hall was inhabitable; the rest of the house was a pile of furniture and rubble. On everything was a layer of white plaster dust. There was no electricity.
Dee-Dee and Tessa stood in the damp gloom of the great hall. Don, with a torch, sought out kindling to make a fire. In front of the fireplace was a large mattress and blankets. Tessa and Dee-Dee sank onto these.
‘I’ll light the Aga,’ said Don. ‘It takes a bit of time, but then we can have hot water. How about some food, are you hungry?’ Tessa and Dee-Dee’s faces were blank. Don sat next to them. ‘Well, it is primitive, but you get used to it.’ The fire was beginning to burn and smoke. ‘It does that,’ said Don, poking it. Tessa and Dee-Dee coughed. Wind blew down the chimney. Tessa thought of their comfortable flat in Notting Hill, now packed in Don’s van. She felt too tired to move. Don went to the kitchen to coax the Aga. They wrapped themselves in blankets and gazed into the smoke.
‘Oh, Tessy,’ whispered Dee-Dee.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Tessa, not sounding very sure.
Don came back with bread and soup. ‘It’s nettle gruel, I picked them yesterday.’ He lit a large candle and placed it by the fire. There were no spoons so they drank straight from the bowls. It was lukewarm.
‘This is our first meal here,’ he said solemnly. ‘It’s a celebration, we have begun a new existence. It’s not going to be easy. We have chosen to live in this ancient and wonderful house. We have given up comforts … At the moment what we see is the ashes, but we will be like the phoenix and rise out of the ashes.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No,’ said Tessa.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Nor am I,’ said Don, ‘but I think we need a prayer; prayer’s very strengthening.’
‘We could pray to the spirit of the house,’ suggested Tessa, feeling very much that St John’s was a living being they were going to capture.
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Don was very excited. ‘Let’s join hands, then … and close our eyes … how shall I start?’
They sat in a tight circle. The fire crackled. ‘St John’s, you have seen many people … um … look down on us now and have mercy … we have not come to destroy but to rebuild … we want to see you filled again with a working community as it was … oh, gosh … ages ago … St John’s, have mercy on us and give us strength, you were built by men, but have outlasted men, you have stood through storms and wars. Help us to achieve our purpose, to become a centre of inspiration.’
Tessa listened, to the wind in the chimney, the fire, the silence of a country night. She opened her eyes. Dee-Dee and Don were smiling at her. ‘Phew,’ said Don, and wrapped himself in the blanket too.
‘That was beautiful,’ said Dee-Dee, all dreamy.
‘This soup is disgusting,’ said Tessa, and they all laughed.
‘Where shall we sleep?’ asked Dee-Dee after some time. The fire was nearly out.
‘Oh,’ and Don was only slightly embarrassed; ‘I thought perhaps you could sleep here with me …’
Tessa put down her pencil. She had finished. Then what happened, she thought as she picked up her things. Dirty hippies have a sex orgy. But as she walked back to St John’s she was angry. It hadn’t been like that, it hadn’t been sordid, it had been beautiful and special … she opened her car door and Mirabelle came running out of the house.
‘Have you finished? Do have some more tea.’
‘I have to go.’
‘How’s it coming on?’
‘Oh … fine … it hasn’t changed much,’ said Tessa, off guard.
‘Changed? Then you’ve been here before?’
‘Oh … only once … years ago … in the seventies.’
‘Then you must have known the … previous occupants?’
‘No … not really, friends of friends, you know.’
‘Bernard said they left the place in a terrible state. And that little girl …’ She quivered. Tessa said nothing. There was an embarrassed silence.
‘Well, well … they knew all about vegetables and flowers and things, so Bernard says … are you sure you won’t have more tea?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow at nine-thirty,’ said Tessa, and left.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_deff06f1-b6a4-57e1-9a1e-975515e93ea9)
Tessa woke in her hotel room in Bury St Edmunds. She had been dreaming about Dee-Dee. Whenever she dreamt about Murray or Don she woke feeling angry, but a dream about Dee-Dee always left her sad. She had close female friends now; Fiona, who worked in the gallery in Bath, and Bunty who she went cycling with, but nobody was as close as Dee-Dee had been.
As far back as she could remember Dee-Dee was there. She came to play every other Saturday. Tessa was an only child. Her parents felt she needed ‘company’. Her dream was vague but what remained was a picture of Dee-Dee, crinkly gingery hair, wide blue eyes, pink cheeks and freckles, the little girl and the adult fused into one. She wondered, but only briefly, what Dee looked like now. With this thought she got out of bed and drew the curtains.
It was sunny, a good day for sketching. She wished bitterly she was back in her house. The hotel room with apricot sheets and curtains depressed her; there was nothing here she could use to strengthen herself. She ran a bath. At least the bathroom was stark and white. It was only seven o’clock.
Two girls in the garden with all the dolls. They were playing hairdresser’s, Dee-Dee’s favourite game, or rather she was playing and Tessa was watching.
‘… And this one’s called Dibby and she has beautiful yellow hair and I’m going to plait it and put blue ribbons on, and this one’s called Dobby and she has beautiful black hair and I’m going to make it all curly …’
She stopped in the middle of her monologue.
‘Tessy, will we always be friends?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa; she couldn’t imagine it any different.
Dee-Dee began to brush the doll’s hair vigorously. ‘You’re full of tangles, you’re quite matty … Tessy, will we be friends even when we’re married?’ getting married was Dee-Dee’s other favourite game.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa, turning one of the dolls upside-down.
‘You mustn’t do that, she’s having a perm … Tessy, when people are married they don’t have friends …’
Tessa looked at her seriously. Dee-Dee had rosy cheeks and ribbons. She was pretty, Tessa wasn’t. Her parents called her ‘peaky’. ‘Why not?’ she said.
‘They just don’t. My mummy’s got no friends at all, and my daddy …’
Tessa thought, it was true, her parents didn’t have any friends either. The only person who ever came to stay was Auntie and she was horrible.
‘You see,’ said Dee-Dee, ‘when people get married and grown up they go and live in houses and they … don’t … have … friends.’ She threw the doll across the lawn. ‘You’re too bad, you’re too fidgety!’
‘Why can’t we still be friends?’ said Tessa.
‘Because we can’t, it’s not allowed.’ Dee-Dee was cross. She went all pink when she was cross.
Tessa thought again. She thought of next door and across the road and all of Lime Avenue and down to the shops and back. People in houses with babies and dogs and gardens. It made her cross too. She jumped up.
‘I want to be friends for ever.’
‘Well, we can’t!’
‘Why can’t we?’
‘We just can’t.’ Dee-Dee had started to cry. Any minute now Tessa’s mother would run out and ask what on earth was going on.
Tessa sat down. ‘Dee-Dee,’ she said, ‘why can’t we be different …’
Tessa moved her feet in the bath water. Ripples ran up her body. She moved her feet again and more ripples ran over her. She was lean and muscular. She used her body as a means of transport. These days she rarely connected it with pleasure.
Dee-Dee woke in the middle of their first night at St John’s.
‘Tessy, where’s the loo? I can’t remember, I’m dying for a piss.’
‘Oh, Dee … it’s on the other side and up some stairs.’
‘That’s miles away … I can’t find the torch … Tessy, there might be spiders …’
‘Shhhhh.’ But Don was fast asleep. They looked at him. He was lying on his back, both arms stretched out.
‘He’s exhausted,’ said Tessa, and they giggled.
‘Oh Tessy, don’t, I’ll wet myself.’
‘You’ll have to go outside.’
‘Somebody might see me.’
‘Dee-Dee you are a dope, we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘If I must.’
Wrapped up in one blanket, they stepped into the night.
‘Oh, look! Wow!’ The sky was filled with stars. There was a thin new moon and the constellations were clear, each star a pinprick of brilliance. The Milky Way reeled over the Hall.
‘It’s trippy!’ said Dee-Dee, breathless. ‘Oh, I must have this piss.’
‘Now I want to go too.’
They squatted by the wall. Their two streams of urine merged into one and ran gurgling down a drain. They stayed there gazing at the heavens.
‘I got used to squatting in India,’ said Dee-Dee. ‘Everybody squats … the stars there were … cosmic. Jeremy tried to tell me the names but I’ve forgotten.’
‘I used to have a book about stars, that one like a W is Cassiopeia and that’s Taurus the bull, and that’s Hercules …’
‘I can’t see it.’
‘In the book there were pictures, it made it clearer.’
They held hands under the blanket.
‘Don’s lovely, isn’t he?’ said Dee after a while.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it will be like this every night?’
‘Why not?’ and they laughed nervously.
‘Are you in love with him?’ asked Dee-Dee.
‘I don’t know, really … but I like him … are you?’
‘I don’t think so, but he’s special, you know.’
‘Well, we’ll share him then.’
‘Until?’
‘Until what?’
Then a shooting star skidded across the sky and disappeared behind the barns.
‘Ohhhh!’ exclaimed Dee-Dee.
‘It’s a sign,’ said Tessa.
Tessa drove to St John’s. It was a clear Sunday morning. There was much less traffic than the day before. The fields and villages flashed past without interruption. No shoppers, no energetic families. People were still in bed or reading the papers at breakfast. Yawning, stretching. Only much later would start the rush to the sea.
A sunny day, slow-moving puffy clouds, hardly a breeze. It was going to be hot. Farmers were deciding to start the harvest. Combines heaved down the narrow roads of the Saints, their drivers shut away in airless glass. Modern harvesting is dusty, noisy, unpleasant. But around St John’s the fields were quiet; after all, it had been an unpredictable summer. The wheat was golden, its grains plump and ripe. It was doomed.
Mirabelle was dressed and immaculate. She looked like she had been up for hours and her manner was just as brightly brittle. Tessa felt over-casual in old jeans and a white shirt. Mirabelle was in dusky pink with matching shoes and nails. Her lips were also pink. They framed her smiling teeth.
‘What a lovely day … I do love the sun … do you want coffee?’
‘Later perhaps.’
‘At eleven? Yes? I’ll bring it to you. Will you be in the same place?’
‘No …’ Tessa frowned at the Hall. The sun glinted on the church windows. St John’s appeared bold, defiant almost. ‘Does the walled garden still exist?’
‘The parterre?’
‘You could call it that … I’ll start there, it’s an interesting foreground.’
‘Bernard says the design is Tudor …’ she paused. ‘I’m afraid you might not see Bernard, he’s gone to Belgium. He’s after a clock … this is always happening. I hoped he’d be back for the holiday, but … well, there it is.’ She shook as if struck by a cold wind. ‘I might go out later … I think the gardener’s in, but he won’t disturb you.’
The walled garden was set some distance from the house on the other side of the barns. It was the old kitchen garden and even in Geoffrey’s day Molly’s ageing Charlie cultivated it, and it had not succumbed to the brambles and nettles that took over the rest of the grounds. It was the first section of St John’s they tackled. Later, when other land was cleared, they laid out the walled garden as a Tudor knot, with herbs, salad crops and soft fruit, bordered by low box hedges. It was still how Tessa remembered it except the grass paths had been replaced by sterile gravel. There was a statue in the centre, a marble Victorian lady pretending to be Greek. Tessa sat by her, and looked towards the Hall, framed by the arch in the wall.
That first summer, when Adam and his two Eves lived in Paradise. They knew little about gardening. Don sold his van to buy tools and they sowed beans too early and peas too late. Consequently they lived off bread and cheese and apples. But it was summer and it was glorious. They swam in the moat, sunbathed nude, walked everywhere and discovered empty churches and cautious farmers. They carried bagfuls of shopping three miles. They had bonfires every night, burning away dregs of years left behind by Geoffrey. They hacked at brambles, burnt those too, and in the walled garden dug up weeds and also things they had just planted.
By the fire in the great hall in the evenings Don read Huxley’s Island.
‘Listen to this. He says here that everybody in Pala has to dig for two hours a day. Well, he’s right, isn’t he, digging’s so … physical, isn’t it? Digging’s the only work one should be doing, not sitting at a desk, where does that get you? It makes you senile.’
‘I’m knackered,’ said Tessa.
‘Of course you are, but don’t you see it’s doing you good. Winstanley had something to say about it, now where’s Winstanley?’
Wherever Don was there was always a book. The great hall was filling up with dusty tomes rescued from other parts of the house. Winstanley was underneath Paradise Lost.
‘Listen to this … Tessa? Dee-Dee? Is she asleep? This is about the diggers: “Let everyone that intends to live in peace get themselves with diligent labour to till, digge and plow the common and barren land to get their bread with righteous moderate working among all moderate minded people. This prevents the evil of idleness.” Isn’t that right? Have you ever worked so hard? And weren’t we idle before, bumming around?’
Tessa lay down. Dee-Dee was breathing regularly and gently; it was soporific. Tessa felt as if every muscle in her body had been stretched, but she liked this new feeling. I am strong, she thought. She was much stronger than Dee-Dee and probably more than Don.
‘… To get their bread with righteous moderate working …’
They bought their bread in Bungay.
Through the doorway into the walled garden came the gardener; balding, red-faced, old cardigan, cord trousers, cap. Standard rustic. He was pushing a wheelbarrow. He looked like a Hoskin. Molly’s Charlie was a Hoskin.
‘Morning,’ he said. He looked at her strangely, but then most people looked at her like that. Perhaps it was the flashes of red in her hair like the crest of a strange bird of paradise. ‘Ah, ha.’ He put down his wheelbarrow.
‘The garden’s lovely.’
‘Flowers! You can’t eat they.’
‘I wanted to say your Savoys are splendid.’
‘Not a bad crop,’ he nodded critically. ‘I eats most of it myself. Er and ’im, what they don’t eat I gets and ’im ’e’s never here and ’er, she don’t eat.’
‘Bit of a waste of time, then?’
‘I think ’er freezer’s full, I think ’er’s got ten freezers … work on a Sunday, too. I got to keep it smart, some high-faluting type’s getting it put in a book.’
Tessa smiled. ‘That’s me, I’m doing sketches.’
He snorted. ‘I hope they pays you.’
‘And I hope they pay you.’
‘Oh, they do that. I said to ’im, there’s work for six here and ’ee said, I’ll pay for six … did you ever? Now, when them hippies were here, you heard about that?’
‘Yes.’
He laughed. ‘Those girls in their noddy nothings, and the lads. I hid behind a bush once, see.’
Tessa said nothing.
‘Now, Charlie Hoskins, he were my cousin and he said to me, “Now Bob, you wouldn’t believe what they gets up to.”’ He picked up the wheelbarrow. ‘But I tell you, they didn’t put nothing in the freezer. They grew it and they et it, now that’s right, isn’t it?’
Tessa resumed her work. She didn’t believe for a moment Bob had hid behind a bush. She was sure that story was circulated by anyone who visited the local pubs. She well knew they had been objects of amusement. They were tolerated and later even liked, but the Hoskins, the Becks, the Palmers, and others who were the inhabitants of the Saints, could never understand why Don and his friends chose to live unheated, with dirty clothes and bare feet.
Don was respected in a strange sort of way. He was ‘gentry’, one of them, moneyed and mad. ‘Old man Bell’, as Geoffrey was known, was revered. ‘In Old man Bell’s day’, that golden age, prewar, pre-tourist, pre-European Community, when the pubs were smoky, with rickety chairs and lino floors, and the men played cribbage.
They discovered one of these pubs in a village called St James, which had even fewer houses than St John’s. The George was shabby. The bar was the size of a small sitting room. There was one table, some benches and a fire, even though it was July. They went there to find something to eat.
‘Do you serve food?’ asked Don.
The landlord, thin and wrinkled, stared. His mother, small and very fat, stared too. Two men in caps by the fire started laughing.
‘What you want, then, chicken in a basket? Fish in a basket? Turkey in a basket? Nelson, get ’em roast beef in a basket.’
‘No food,’ said the landlord.
‘We’ve walked miles,’ said Tessa.
‘There’s no food.’
‘But there’s beer,’ yelled the men.
In the end Nelson’s mother made sandwiches, curled white bread and spam. They drank so much they could hardly stand.
‘This place is amazing,’ said Don. The beer was amazing too. The notorious George, open all day and most of the night. Don went back frequently.
It was late September. The harvest was over, the straw and stubble had been burnt, the fields were being ploughed. It occurred to Don, Tessa and Dee-Dee, like it occurred to the grasshopper in the story, that winter was coming and they were unprepared. Their only successful crop was spinach, and one can eat enough spinach. Don’s daily reading was The Cultivation of Vegetables and Flowers, printed in about 1888, but it was getting colder and working outside was not appealing. Inside was colder too. They moved their bed from the great hall to the solar. Don had kept Geoffrey’s carved bed. At night they wore thick socks and wool vests. They kept the Aga burning constantly.
‘The winter’s going to be fantastic,’ said Don; ‘wait until it snows, it’s like the snow palace in Dr Zhivago.’
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Lucy English
Lucy English’s third novel is set in a Suffolk commune in the Seventies where, beneath the blissful summer surface, the young inhabitants are caught in a downward spiral ending in tragedy.When Don, an aristocratic young Notting Hill poet, inherits a stately home in the depths of the Suffolk countryside from an elderly relative, he decides to move there taking with him an artist, Tessa and her best friend, Deedee. A menage a trois develops and as they form a commune and begin to grow their own vegetables, they live together in rural harmony. It is only when they decide to enlarge their group, bringing in strangers encountered at fairs and in pubs – the mesmerising and charismatic Jack, a single mother Helen and her troublesome six-year-old daughter, Beauty – that the balance is upset, tensions emerge and the friction builds to its horrific climax.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_e730dc1d-9dc0-59af-823f-2f270b4919e2)
Fourth Estate
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Copyright © Lucy English 2000
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fourth Estate
‘Each Moment’ by the Incredible String Band. Words by Robin Williamson. Reproduced by kind permission of IMP Ltd. Lyrics from ‘Astral Weeks’ by Van Morrison.
The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781841152424
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007485390
Version: 2016-03-23
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_65ae318f-5b57-52f6-8334-859e52089951)
This was our dancing day
So even those with nothing to celebrate
Shook off their unfathomable gloom
And were lost with us in that meadow.
From ‘Albion’ in Spirit Level, a book of poems by Andrew Bell
CONTENTS
Cover (#u2a71a908-7370-5d07-bc62-f83e34a6693e)
Title Page (#u42097603-eb15-52f0-b59b-1cb330fe3cb1)
Copyright (#ulink_8284f8d4-04b0-55c5-980e-ea27d209c4e7)
Epigraph (#ulink_b1979928-74ba-56af-9885-d13ae67c9fd0)
Chapter One (#ulink_ad1b1856-45a2-5b5a-b7ba-1ba0b6e5556f)
Chapter Two (#ulink_c439431b-d2f0-575b-992d-a6c8798df0a6)
Chapter Three (#ulink_23c3eb24-ed55-5ef5-acd5-1c4b3b1620ce)
Chapter Four (#ulink_04e657e9-7f89-5a12-9f76-eec54c05e5b7)
Chapter Five (#ulink_949a1976-6d9f-5f9a-9724-780eb5cd514d)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8c668932-c1c2-5d7d-b0ee-0c0ef2f0c4be)
Bristol is built on several hills. In Totterdown there is a street that seems to cling to the steepest edge of one on a high embankment above Temple Meads Station. Tessa’s studio was on the top floor of a house in this terrace. From here it wasn’t difficult to entertain the idea that one was floating above the city like the hot-air balloons do on a fine day, but it also wasn’t difficult to imagine the whole street of houses slipping over the embankment; the gardens already lay at perilous angles. It was with this feeling of landing in front of the 10.45 from platform 6 that caused Tessa to stop working and look out of her studio window.
The ten forty-five gathered speed and whirred past harmlessly, but Tessa still felt she had fallen beneath its wheels. She also knew why she felt like this. She had that morning received a letter from her ex. It had just stopped raining and there was a break in the clouds. Sunlight fell onto the other side of Bristol, emphasising the lumpy forms of the university building, the glass edges of the city office blocks, and, pointing up between, the spires of Christchurch and St Mary Redcliffe; Bristol’s skyline was urban but not unpleasant. She could also see the parklands of Ashton Court and the gardens of Brandon Hill, for it was May and the trees were blossoming and fresh.
Smudgy sunlight on pinkish stone, pastel blue between moving clouds, it’s definitely a watercolour, thought Tessa turning from her window and back to her art, but her canvas was dark and red and large with jagged forms like a gaping dragon or a charred accident.
She poked at her work with a brush dipped in vermilion, but only half-heartedly. ‘It’s not savage enough, it’s blunted and dead.’ Letters from Murray always had this effect on her. Tessa’s walls were laden with other brooding canvases; she sold approximately one of these a year. The rest of her work lay in folders, because Tessa was an illustrator; watercolours of gardens, country scenes, Bristol sites, for calendars, birthday cards and coffee-table books. It was Murray who owned the gallery in Bath where she had first exhibited fourteen years ago and they had been lovers for eight of them.
Murray Maclean now lived in Edinburgh reinventing his Scottish roots. He had opened another gallery there, mostly for young Scottish painters. He still had the gallery in Bath but he showed only an indifferent attitude towards it, like he showed towards other left-behind projects. And Tessa was another project, she knew that. His letter was like a public relations handout, with a list of all the artists who would be exhibiting that summer, what cafés he had visited and who would be coming up for the Festival. His letter was like him, smart and to the point. Murray was in his fifties now, tall and elegant with thick grey hair. At the end he said, ‘If you’re up for the Festival Claudia and I would love to see you, that is if she isn’t too busy buying clothes at Baby Gap.’
Tessa stabbed at her painting again with red paint as thick as a placenta. Right from the start she had said to Murray, ‘I don’t want kids. Kids drive you mad.’ They had stayed with that but when he turned fifty women of child-bearing age became more attractive. Claudia was twenty-nine and had just had his baby in March. He met her some months after he split up with Tessa but that didn’t make it any better. ‘We’ll still be friends,’ he said, but he meant, ‘I’ll still sell your paintings.’
The other letter she had received that morning was from her agents and in an hour’s time she had an appointment to see them. Murray had introduced her to Wessex Artists so at least she could be grateful he had given her a living.
*
She left for her appointment on her bicycle and in her cycling gear. Her lodger in the basement, whom she had nothing to do with apart from collecting the rent, referred to her as ‘that dyke’; but what did she know, she was a chirpy English student, what did she know about sharp-looking forty-six-year-olds?
Tessa was sleek and wiry. Her hair, if it had been long, would have been corkscrew curly but she kept it short. It was dark brown, nearly black and the strands of grey at the front she dyed bright red. She wore black or grey, Trousers never skirts. Boyish casual clothes and sometimes a red velvet scarf. Her appearance was clean-cut and unadorned. She looked like she would prefer a day’s cycling to a morning in front of a mirror. She had the taut sun-touched skin of the very fit.
Some women might adopt the boyish look as a tease, ‘Guess what, I’m a real girl underneath,’ but with Tessa it was more complicated. Her appearance said, ‘I’m a woman, but I’m independent,’ or more usually, ‘Clear off’ – but Tessa was not a dyke.
Wessex Artists were on the eleventh floor of a block in the centre of Bristol. The view was panoramic. Tessa waited, watching squalling, reeling seagulls and rain clouds gathering. ‘They’re ready for you now,’ said the secretary.
Coral and Pumpkin looked Tessa up and down. Pumpkin sniffed as if Tessa had arrived fresh from a pig farm.
‘Do sit down,’ she said.
They were misnamed. Coral was round and squashy in voluminous florals. She had fuzzy hair. It was Pumpkin who more resembled a calcinated sea-creature. They were at least ten years older than Tessa, preserved perpetually in a mould made sometime in the fifties. Nice gals. Pumpkin’s suit was tweed-grey like her hair; she was small and neat.
‘Did you read the letter?’ Her voice reminded Tessa of metal tinging.
‘Sure.’ Tessa crossed her legs.
‘Well, what did you think?’ Pumpkin tapped her desk with a pen.
‘It’s OK.’
Pumpkin’s tapping became louder, her mouth pursed.
‘I don’t know what you expect me to say,’ said Tessa after a while; ‘I’ll do it, you know that.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Coral was becoming agitated. ‘It’s just that,’ she caught Pumpkin’s eye, ‘we had a little talk the other day, and eventually, after some time … it was a long talk, Tessa …’
Pumpkin glared. ‘It’s your attitude I’m worried about.’
Tessa laughed. ‘Come on, Pumpkin. I’ll do the work. What is it? Six Christmas cards, the suspension bridge at night, bunny rabbits?’
Pumpkin was silent. Coral fidgeted nervously, wobbling.
Pumpkin patted her skirt. ‘You see, Tessa, you’re good.’ She paused.
‘You’re very good.’ She picked up some papers for emphasis. ‘You’re in demand and yet …’
‘Your watercolours are lovely, Tessa, so sensitive,’ interrupted Coral, ‘… and yet, you treat it as though it were—’
‘Rubbish?’ suggested Tessa.
‘Your other work won’t sell, it won’t ever sell.’ Pumpkin’s voice was steely. ‘Especially now that Murray’s in Scotland,’ she added.
‘I … don’t … care,’ said Tessa like a two-year-old. It was a manner guaranteed to irritate Pumpkin.
Pumpkin sat up straight and smoothed her skirt again. She threw Coral a look. ‘Tell her about the assignment, then.’
‘Oh, yes, well, it’s really nice … last summer do you remember The Historic Houses of Oxfordshire? Well, of course you do.’ She smiled, regarding Pumpkin with caution. ‘They liked your work, said it really made the book … so this time they want …’
‘Seven more books to make a series? Eight more? Fifty more?’
Pumpkin made a hissing sort of noise.
‘Er, no, no, Tessa,’ Coral said, ‘just one more book actually.’ Her eyes were on Pumpkin. ‘They would like you to do six out of fifteen, so you’ve got the lion’s share. Pumpkin, she’s got the lion’s share, hasn’t she … Pumpkin?’
‘Yes,’ said Pumpkin suddenly; ‘six houses, three sketches of each, pencil and wash, there’ll also be photographs, you know the format. So you’ll do it?’
‘Oh, Pumpkin, we didn’t say where, did we? Oh, silly us. The Historic Houses of Suffolk.’
Tessa’s face became uncertain. ‘Suffolk?’
‘Yes, you know, in the east, Ipswich, Norwich …’
‘Norwich is in Norfolk, Coral.’ Pumpkin took a sheet of paper out of a drawer. ‘Choose the ones you want, there’s a description of each, ring us tomorrow when you’ve decided.’
‘I’ll do it now,’ said Tessa briskly; ‘I know Suffolk.’
‘Oh, do you?’ Coral said. ‘I went there for a holiday once, years ago, to a pretty place, it was, near the sea. Well, it was on the sea, actually, there was a lighthouse, I think.’
Tessa scanned the list without paying any attention to Coral. It was taking her a long time. Pumpkin looked at her watch.
‘Suffolk’s lovely,’ continued Coral; ‘Constable country. Well, I didn’t actually go to that bit, but I’ve been told it’s lovely. Where I went it was rather flat …’
Tessa handed the list back.
‘We’ll send you the brief,’ said Pumpkin. ‘Fleming Hall, Bedingfield; well, I thought you might choose that one. Hengrave, yes … Kentwell Hall and Long Melford – don’t forget to see the church … Lavenham, well, there’s plenty there … Heveningham … wasn’t that bought by an Arab? … St John’s Hall? Oh, I am surprised, Tessa, I thought you might have chosen Ickworth, or Alston Court, or Glenham. It’s the smallest one, you know, of minor interest.’
‘But it’s terribly old,’ said Coral; ‘actually it’s the oldest, isn’t it?’ She began to look through a folder.
‘It’s twelfth century,’ said Tessa, ‘but was enlarged in the fourteenth and then again to its present size in 1585. The windows of the great hall came from a nearby nunnery and are in two different styles, decorated and perpendicular.’
‘Oh, I say!’ said Coral.
Pumpkin studied the list. ‘It doesn’t say here about the windows. You know the place, then?’
Tessa stood up to go. ‘Actually, I used to live there.’
She cycled back across Bristol in the rain and up the slow climb to Totterdown. She kicked open her front door and clattered the bicycle in the corridor. Why the bloody hell did I take that on? I don’t want to go to Suffolk, and go to St John’s. Shit! She was soaking wet, and as she threw her wet clothes across the bedroom was confronted with an image of herself first arriving in Bristol after hitching in the rain. She had left Suffolk with nothing, not even a rucksack. She pulled on dry clothes. She was so angry she was close to tears, but it was a long time since Tessa had wept.
I left it all, I left the whole damn lot!
Don had kept sending her things in parcels, and then the money, but she sent it all back. She had bought this house herself with the money she earned from painting and knew every inch of it intimately, since for the last eight years she had scraped and peeled it down to its bones. The house was hers, absolutely hers. Murray had never lived there. Nothing here is yours! She had given up sharing things.
She sat on her bed staring at another of her bleak canvases. Ring up those two bitches, tell them to stuff their assignment! But the hard forms of the painting gave her inspiration; ice and steel, rock and stone, bone. Stone blunts scissors, scissors cut … what’s scaring you? she thought. It was not part of her present self to be emotional. Murray leaving, Claudia’s baby, she had coped with that. It’s a job. Paint the damn place then sod off. She thought how completely she had created her environment here, all hers, bare wood furniture, plain walls, cream, white. She knew everything in her house down to the furthest corner of the most hidden cupboard and her mind scanned these places.
Then she remembered the box she had not sent back. It arrived unexpectedly long after the other parcels and she kept it in her last moment of sentimentality. Under the stairs, seven years ago. She searched it out and took it up to her studio, which was the place she felt most inviolate.
Dusty, a letter – ‘Dear, dear Tessa, please keep these. One day I hope you will forgive us, Don.’ Soppy. Rubbish. She screwed it up. The box was full of photographs. She tipped them on the floor, her life in one heap. There were she and Dee-Dee, spades in hand, smiling in front of the vegetable garden, long hair, wellies, Peruvian jumpers and floppy skirts, stupid clothes for gardening. Don in the orchard in his dressing gown with a basket of apples, smiling. The dressing gown was his coat … St John’s in the snow and all of them outside, smiling. ‘We are the smiling revolution.’ A pile of happy people, summer fairs, winter bonfires.
It wasn’t like that, thought Tessa … And here were she and Don again, in white because that was their wedding. Shit. And she and Dee-Dee swimming in the moat. Tessa felt herself slipping again down the embankment. There were older photographs too; Swinging London, she and Dee-Dee in mini skirts, and now one in black and white, two little girls in a suburban garden, Theresa and Deirdre, puffed sleeves, buckle shoes, arms round each other, smiling …
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f3359f38-2f08-5bc3-b167-cfd874994fc7)
It was late August, the Saturday before the bank holiday. The weather throughout the summer had been indifferent, some might even have called it rotten, but Tessa did not care for sunshine for with it came droves of people, in summer clothes, soaking up the day like pink sponges, with noisy children, grandmothers, dogs and radios. And at the moment Tessa did not care for people.
She had now been in Suffolk for ten days. The rain had slowed her work, for although she preferred damp landscapes, it was more difficult to sketch satisfactorily under dripping trees. At Heveningham she tried for two hours to draw the ribbon wall, but spent most of the time in the orangery avoiding a thunderstorm.
She was in her hotel room in Bury St Edmunds surveying her work. She was quite pleased. They were rough sketches on rain-blotched paper, but she could see how they could progress. Remember, light on stone mullions, indigo shadows under cedar trees. She scribbled notes on the paper. Remember, wet skies, big clouds. The light, pale gold, could be pale green. Sienna-ripe wheat, barley’s softer … Tessa had travelled right through Suffolk, from the rolling willow-banked fields of the Essex borders and the Stour valley to the bleaker wheatlands of what is called High Suffolk, which is almost a joke since nothing except church towers are really high in Suffolk, to outside Bury St Edmunds, the hedgeless fields, agribusiness wheat deserts, no weeds, no poppies, no cornflowers. But it’s not got worse, thought Tessa, remembering exactly what it was like to be in the middle of a wheatfield, when the far end of it was ages away, and the trees by the ditches seemed tiny. And Tessa paused with this image of herself, ‘walking away from the Hall’, and as she saw herself becoming tiny in the distance, she felt uneasy and uncertain, for she had yet to go to St John’s.
I’m slipping, she thought, and she was tired, for she had worked hard, concentrating on forms and colours and angles and light and the present, always the present, the now of the image in front of her, nothing at all to do with memories. And Tessa felt sad and vulnerable. Ring up P. and C., said one part of her; oh weak, weak, where’s your steel? Where’s your ice? said another. And she thought of her stark canvases, but they were miles away on the other side of England.
She wrote a postcard to Murray. ‘Hope you enjoy the Festival. Couldn’t make it this year. I’m on an assignment in Suffolk. Love to Claudia and the kid.’ She had never told Murray much about Suffolk and what she did say was rather vague. Oh, I lived there in the seventies with some hippies. Her life before him held little interest for him. He was a man of the present. She licked the stamp. She had a picture of him in her mind at the opening of one of her exhibitions. Murray, in the centre of the room with a group of people around him. He was a tall man. He turned round suddenly to look for her and in that sweeping movement seemed to Tessa like a magician who could conjure up who he wanted, and make disappear who he didn’t want. She decided she wouldn’t write to him again.
She left her room and went to the abbey gardens; the hotel faced one of the old gatehouses. Bury St Edmunds was lively that Saturday; the market was on, the car parks were full, in the abbey gardens were people enjoying themselves in the manner Tessa found so repugnant. But now she was preoccupied.
The abbey, the burial place of St Edmund, had once been huge, the largest ecclesiastical building in Britain. Its size today would compare to a shopping complex, but there was virtually nothing left of it, eroded since the Reformation by weather, and also by townsfolk who used the place as a quarry; there were many houses in Bury built out of the abbey. Only a few portions of wall and excavated foundations remained. The lumps of stone, to Tessa, were baffling, a piece here, another bit at the far end of the gardens. A sign said ‘The Dormitory’ – did monks really sleep there? She couldn’t imagine it – where? There wasn’t anywhere. She stood in the nave by the high altar. Over her head should have been a vaulted roof but instead there was the Suffolk sky with hanging clouds moving slowly. It would have all vanished, thought Tessa, if someone hadn’t preserved it. It was time for her to start working.
From Bury St Edmunds she drove east and north, for St John’s was close to the Norfolk border. She had hitched up and down this road dozens of times but now the road was wider and faster, bypassing all the villages – the windmill at Stanton; Botesdale and Rickinghall Superior, so close to each other they were quite entangled; Walsham-le-Willows. She was watching the road signs. Harlesdon, with its wide, open street and Georgian houses. Ten miles to go. The road ran alongside the Waveney. Here she felt she must know every tree. Wortwell. It’s a job, I’m on a job. Piccadilly Corner. Wasn’t that where? … Six places, three sketches of each … Flixton, the old aerodrome, it’s been ploughed up. Well, the pub’s been tarted … Earsham … I waited for a lift there for three hours once. Then just before Bungay she turned off the main road with the lorries and holiday cars going to Lowestoft, into the lanes, into the area called the Saints, where there’s a local saying that once you get into them you can’t get out, and it seems true, for the roads meander irrationally and the signposts, if you can find them, are confusing. Left, St Margaret’s, right St Margaret’s. But Tessa was not lost. Here the countryside was open and the sky fell right down to the ground uninterrupted. The road swept round in a huge arc avoiding no apparent obstacle. This was the Saints. Left was St Margaret’s, St Michael’s, St James, St George, St Lawrence, the other St Margaret’s; and right was St John’s.
*
St John’s was barely a hamlet, four cottages and a farm close to the church. Once over the bridge there was no more of it, a truly uneventful place. But across the fields was a group of tall trees which the eye was drawn to as the trees in this area were usually solitary; and as the road turned again the Hall could be seen. Tessa saw it now and felt again the impact, for although the Hall was neither huge nor grand it was imposing.
Three of them in a car, cruising round Fulham on a hot day.
‘What shall we dooo?’
‘Come on, Don, you’re full of ideas.’
‘… We could go somewhere.’
‘Yeah, what a turn on.’
And then Don said, ‘I’ve got a super idea’ and Tessa and Dee-Dee fell about laughing. ‘No, honestly, a really good idea … I’ve got a sort of cousin …’
‘Wow.’
‘He lives in the countryside, in an amazing place … stop laughing … right, you don’t believe me, I’ll take you there.’
‘Don, Don, we believe you … mind that lorry! … Don, Don? Where are we going?’
‘Suffolk.’
Three of them in a car all the way to Suffolk, and Tessa and Dee-Dee sang ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and kept saying ‘are we nearly there yet?’ but as they got further and further from London the joke wore off. They drove for hours beyond Baldock, Royston and Newmarket, for this was when Suffolk was the sleepiest place on earth and nobody ever went there.
They turned the last bend and there was the Hall across the fields. There were more hedges then but it still stood out boldly. The sun shone on its church windows.
Dee-Dee scrambled next to Tessa to get a better look. ‘Oh, oh, is this it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he live here by himself? Oh, Don, I’m not smart enough.’
‘He won’t mind.’
The drive was a mud track full of potholes. There was a collection of crumbling barns. The place seemed derelict. They drove into the courtyard, where weeds grew between brick paving under a huge chestnut tree. Three of them, in crumpled London clothes. Dee-Dee pulled her mini skirt straight, but Tessa just stared.
‘What do you think?’ said Don. There were weeds growing on the roof.
‘It’s wild,’ said Tessa; ‘it’s like a dream …’
Tessa, in her cream Morris Traveller, turned into the courtyard. It was neatly gravelled, but the chestnut tree was as massive as ever. Its branches skimmed the roof of restored barns. In front of the house was an area of lawn.
She glanced at her brief. The owners were a Mr and Mrs B. Hallivand. Tessa had always used the side door by the kitchen but she supposed a Mr and Mrs B. Hallivand might not. The main door was in the porch, very like a church porch, two-storied with a tiny room above. Gargoyles gaped. The knocker was twisted brass, heavy. No answer. She knocked again and the noise echoed through the house. She tried the side door, no answer. Shit. She studied the brief. ‘Copy of letter sent to Mr and Mrs’ etc. ‘Thank you for your co-operation in the production of The Historic Houses of Suffolk’ (in red letters). ‘This book will be a unique document examining the most beautiful and,’ etc.
‘Schedule of work. The artist, Ms Tessa Foolks’ (spelt wrongly) ‘will arrive at your home on Saturday 24
August at one-thirty promptly.’ Typical Pumpkin. It was now one-twenty-five. Tessa waited and smoked a French cigarette, which was something she did in times of extreme stress. St John’s was locked and silent.
Shit. Stupid rich bums, I should have phoned! She much preferred working at a house not privately owned; at least she could cold-shoulder inquisitors. ‘Yes, thank you, it is very good and I’ve got one more hour to finish it.’ You couldn’t say that to an owner. They always hovered about making sure you included their favourite meconopsis, or got the patina exactly right on the hautboy. She waited and smoked another cigarette.
Damn you, she said, partly to the house, partly to the Hallivands and also partly to her invading memories, but she was holding them back, concentrating hard; this house, the present, this job. Except at that moment there was no job.
She stared at the house. The stonework had been recently cleaned and was buff-gold, the chimney stacks were straight, there were flower beds alongside the walls. Marguerites, artemesia, not bad choices, well weeded, probably had a gardener. To the left was a brick wall surrounding the orchard. The old apple trees leaning and twisted, they were still there, a good crop of apples coming, no vegetables, that was to be expected.
The grass was closely cut. On it were white metal chairs round a table, old ones, looked French. A striking herbaceous border ran down this side of the house; behind were espalier pear trees. The lawn fell down to the moat. From here it seemed as if the house were completely surrounded by water but in reality the moat was crescent-shaped, the furthest end of it under the tall trees in a dank wilderness. Between the moat and the Hall was a narrow strip of grass. Three doors opened out onto this. It was the most sheltered part of the garden, protected from the winds that always blew across Suffolk, straight from Russia. This narrow lawn led to another enclosed area. Tessa felt proud of the gardens. The Hallivands’ beautiful borders would not exist had she not spent nearly ten years in her wellies, chopping, cutting and digging. Gardens were the one thing Tessa still let herself be emotional about and she was actually smiling as she approached the rose garden.
Old roses with trailing stems and heavy flowers, dark red petals on the lawn. In June a deep musky scent only old roses have …
There was a door there now. Of course in August there would only be a few blooms, perhaps one or two on the Zépherine Drouhin …
There was concrete under her feet and what? … at first she couldn’t take it in: there was a swimming pool …
‘The peasants!’ shrieked Tessa. She couldn’t believe it, what about the Provence rose and the musk rose? The damask roses?
White concrete, flowers in tubs, a square of blue-bottomed swimming pool. Tessa felt sick. The Zépherine Drouhin still climbed the wall, but her garden, her special place, lying on the grass breathing in sweet rose air, her quartered roses of burgundy and darkest crimson, almost purple … There were glass doors and a patio with barbecue furniture. I’m going, she thought, but a car was coming.
A maroon Volvo estate turned into the courtyard. Tessa was storming across the orchard. The owner flounced towards her unstably on high heels. They met on the lawn in front of the house.
‘I’m so sorry, didn’t you get my message?’
‘No.’ Tessa was obviously furious.
‘How dreadful, it’s simply unforgivable.’
‘Yes, it’s unforgivable.’ This digs up roses, thought Tessa. It was tall and glamorous, hair unnaturally strawberry-blonde and shiny. It smiled determinedly. ‘You see, I had to go to Norwich, there was a snuff box in Elm Hill … Bernard’s at an auction … I phoned the hotel … It’s so awful when this happens, have you been here long?’
The owner wore silky peach and a face trying to be cheerful but visibly unsettled by Tessa, scowling, in black trousers and a tight T-shirt like a dark urban angel. But Tessa was less angry; she decided this person was not a malicious vandal, more an ignorant one with a high-gloss finish. It offered an elegant hand with pearly fingernails.
‘How do you do, I’m Mirabelle Hallivand, and you must be the artist, Tessa Fooks.’
‘Fulks, they always spell it wrong,’ and she smiled.
Mirabelle laughed and threw her head back, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Well, here we are … What a day … and the snuff box was a fake, I could tell at once … and you’ve been waiting, and the help’s off …’
‘I’d better start work,’ said Tessa; ‘I do have a schedule.’
‘Of course, but please, do come in and let me make you some tea.’
What Tessa noticed first as they stepped inside was the familiar smell; wet stone, damp rush-matting and woodsmoke. She always supposed people gave houses their particular odours, but St John’s seemed to have one of its own. The porch was not filled with gardening tools, flower pots and muddy boots; on the floor was an exquisite rug.
‘This is the great hall,’ said Mirabelle, opening a door in the panelling. There were tapestries on the wall. An ornate brass lantern hung from the rafters. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Mirabelle, showing Tessa an enormous sofa.
There was a grand piano, Persian rugs on the stone floor and large Chinese vases. Mirabelle brought tea in fluted porcelain. She perched on an embroidered chair near the mouth of the huge fireplace.
‘So, you’re going to paint St John’s.’
‘Sketches, really, I finish them off later, they’ll mostly be for page decorations. Has the photographer come?’
‘Last week, he was most charming … It’s nice to have company, it gets isolated here.’ Mirabelle was extremely thin, like a whippet, and had a whippet’s habit of trembling. ‘Bernard has to go to auctions, you see, he’s a dealer.’
‘Got a shop, has he?’
Mirabelle laughed extravagantly. ‘This is the shop. It’s all for sale!’ Her gesture included the entire contents of the great hall. ‘It’s much nicer for clients to decide in a relaxed atmosphere.’
‘Do people come out here?’ Tessa was amazed.
A tremble ran down Mirabelle’s arm into her teacup. ‘We don’t sell to the popular market, our clients are very discerning.’
Tessa quietly estimated the cost of the rug under her feet. To think they had slept on this floor huddled by the fire.
‘I’ll have to start work now,’ she said.
‘So you like painting houses?’ said Mirabelle, keen to continue.
‘I like painting gardens.’
‘Well, we’ve got lots of those here,’ she laughed.
Tessa put down her drink. ‘I believe there’s a rose garden here, with old roses. I was looking for it earlier … some rather rare roses, I thought,’ and her brown eyes fixed on Mirabelle.
‘Ah … well, yes, there was.’ Mirabelle’s bracelets jangled. ‘I’m afraid there was a rather bad winter … well, in the end Bernard had the swimming pool.’
‘What a shame, I love roses.’ Tessa stood up and Mirabelle stood up too.
‘It happened before … me … you see, I’m the second Mrs Hallivand.’
The light through the church windows struck her sideways, emphasising wrinkles under her make-up. In her youth she would have had petal-pink skin but she hadn’t aged well.
She’s as old as me, thought Tessa. ‘I see,’ she said. Mirabelle’s eyes were the palest blue; curiously, the more uncertain they became the more she smiled.
‘Well … well, I shan’t keep you.’
‘Yes, I’m better working uninterrupted.’
‘I could show you the house, the photographer was very impressed.’
‘Not today, I’m already late.’
‘And if you wanted anything, you will ask, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa opening the door. ‘Thank you, Mrs Hallivand.’
‘Oh, please, please, call me Mirabelle,’ and a tremble ran right through her, clanking all her jewellery.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_31452213-a2d4-5574-a207-bc93390c97e3)
Tessa took her sketchbook to the far side of the moat, where the cornfield met the grounds of St John’s. Here the Hall could be seen through the trees. This was the first glimpse one saw from the road, so it seemed the best place to start. Murray would be impressed by St John’s, she thought, and this made her smile because he would never see it now and when they were together he had shown no interest in this section of her life. He loved gardens and it was gardens that had brought them together. Tessa had advised him about the tiny courtyard garden at the back of his gallery. The gardens of St John’s would make him very quiet and put his head to one side, and say, as he did when he was interested in something, ‘Hmm, possibilities …’
The Hallivands’ improvements were not noticeable from this angle. Through the trees the Hall was as mysterious as it had ever been when weeds grew in the courtyard and the gardens were a knot of brambles and nettles. In the field the ripe wheat was prickly against Tessa’s legs and she began to draw.
They stood staring at the house feeling out of place and uncomfortable. Don, whom nobody embarrassed, was at a loss for words. ‘Er, um,’ he said, and it had been his idea in the first place.
Then a door opened and a woman strode out, short, squarish, a broad face and black hair scraped into a bun. She marched towards them as if they were dirty geese. ‘Shoo! Shoo! Off you go.’
Don ran up to her. ‘Molly, it’s me! Don’t you remember? It’s me!’
Molly was not impressed.
‘Oh, Molly, it’s me, I’m Donald, George’s boy, George and Hetty, the Bells, you know; Miranda, Donald.’ At each name he showed how high they used to be. ‘Frances and little Marsha, she’s twelve now …’
Molly threw up her hands. ‘Donald! It is you, and you so grown, when I last saw you, you were …’
‘A squirt, and I was always up the apple trees, and Miranda played the grand piano …’
‘She had a lovely voice.’
‘She’s at the Royal Academy now, she is, she plays the cello too.’
‘And Frances? Such a serious little thing, dark, not like you.’
‘She’s a scientist, she’s brilliant, she’s going to Cambridge.’
‘And the baby?’
‘Oh, Molly, you wouldn’t recognise her, she’s the beautiful one, blonde …’
‘Like you.’
‘Like Mummy. Well, Marsha’s twelve, she’s quite a lady,’ and they both laughed.
Tessa and Dee-Dee were still standing by the car, Dee-Dee tugging her mini skirt. Don pulled Molly over to them.
‘You must meet my friends! This is Tessa and Dee-Dee.’
Molly looked them up and down gravely. Tessa’s mascara had smudged into her cheeks.
‘Gosh! I don’t know their surnames … I met them a week ago … they’re at art school, London’s great at the moment.’
‘I’m Theresa Fulks and this is Deirdre Stallard,’ said Tessa, feeling the whole situation needed clarifying. ‘Don invited us to see his cousin.’
‘Yes, yes, and how is Geoffrey, I’d heard he wasn’t too—’
‘He’s bearing up very well,’ said Molly stoically; ‘rests a lot, we try and look after him.’
Tessa and Dee-Dee gazed at the overgrown garden and the sorry state of the barns. Molly was embarrassed. ‘Charlie’s back’s been bad, he can’t do much now, and I can barely keep up, what with the cleaning and all.’
‘Oh dear, Molly, I didn’t realise, I should have written. Have you got a phone yet?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Bell won’t have it … shall I tell him you’re here? He will be pleased, Donald.’
‘We shouldn’t have come,’ Tessa whispered to Dee-Dee.
Molly led them through the porch and into the blackness of the Hall. It smelled of wet stone, damp rush-matting and woodsmoke. Dee held Tessa’s hand. Molly opened the door in the panelling. Light through the high church windows streamed onto an old collection of broken furniture, stuffed animals under glass, piles of books, Indian dhurries and half-dead geraniums. The great hall was lofty and damp, there were broken window panes and on one of the rafters was a bird’s nest. Beside the stone fireplace, in which a few logs smouldered on a heap of ashes, was an armchair, and in this slept an elderly man in a dressing gown. They moved closer and Tessa could see he wasn’t really old but had the shrivelled yellowish appearance of the terminally ill. His dressing gown was brown checked wool, bought for someone once larger than he. His wrists were thin.
‘Mr Bell, Mr Bell,’ said Molly shaking him gently, ‘there’s somebody to see you.’
The sick man opened his eyes and smiled. He had a kind face, which even illness could not hide. ‘Molly? Is it tea-time already?’
‘No, Mr Bell, there’s Donald to see you, come all the way from London.’
Don rushed over and shook his hand enthusiastically, but Tessa could see how upset he was, he had not expected to find his cousin so frail. ‘Geoffrey, it’s been ages.’
‘Dear Donald, what a surprise. Let me see you, doesn’t he look like George, Molly, a blonde George.’
‘He’s brought some friends, Mr Bell.’ Molly pushed Dee-Dee and Tessa nearer.
‘What modern ladies … and you too Donald, quite the thing, and such a shirt.’
‘Oh, everybody in London wears this sort of stuff, Geoffrey.’
‘“With it”, that’s what they say now, isn’t it?’ He held Don and Dee-Dee’s hands. ‘How splendid of you to come all this way, and such beautiful ladies …’
Dee-Dee’s knees went pink.
‘Molly, make some tea, bring out your best fruit cake. Donald, find some chairs, and let’s celebrate.’
An hour or so later everybody was relaxed, laughing and stuffed with Molly’s cakes. She kept running into the kitchen to make more sandwiches. ‘There’ll be no more food left at this rate, Mr Bell.’
‘Never mind, Molly, tomorrow we’ll get Ram’s to deliver.’
Geoffrey insisted his guests be well fed. ‘I like to see ladies with good appetites.’ He offered Dee another slice of fruit cake. She was completely taken by him, he was absolutely charming. She gazed at him rapturously.
‘What beautiful hair you have, my dear, like the ripest wheat in the afternoon sun …’
‘Geoffrey, you are a one, you used to say things like that to my mother.’
‘Quite right too, Hetty was a beauty, still is. Her and George, so romantic, they were. They still write … Young lady, boys these days are not romantic. Is Donald romantic?’
‘Donald?’ And they screamed with laughter.
‘But tell me, George says you’re “dropping out” of Oxford.’
‘Yes, yes, I am, and I’m not going back … Oxford’s dead, Geoffrey, everybody’s so out of touch. I want to read about Ginsberg and Kerouac and Michael X, not dead people. It’s all happening now, in people’s houses, in pubs and on the street, Geoffrey. Art and literature isn’t stuffed away in libraries, it’s alive … Tessa and Dee-Dee, they’re artists, they know, it’s not just paint and paper, is it?’
‘No.’ Geoffrey was smiling knowingly.
‘It’s true, Geoffrey, it is. What do I get if I stay at Oxford, a degree, a piece of paper? I’ll know all about Milton and Shakespeare and Donne, oh they’re OK, but what about Bob Dylan … it’s poetry, it is … don’t laugh, Geoffrey … it’s got meaning and rhythm and most of all it’s got life … I don’t want a job and work from nine to five, I want to … Be … Read Thoreau, Geoffrey, and Tolstoy and Gandhi, and William Morris and Steiner and Huxley, they got it right … oh yes, and Jesus …’
Geoffrey was laughing. ‘And Jesus … what it is to be young!’
Don’s face was pink, but he wasn’t embarrassed; he was never embarrassed. Tessa and Dee-Dee exchanged glances. Don was the most un-hip creature on earth but he could be pretty inspiring.
Geoffrey was quiet. He poked the dying fire with his walking stick.
‘We were all young, George, Hetty, and I, we all awaited the imminent transformation of the world …’
Molly hovered behind them. ‘Don’t let them tire you, Mr Bell.’
‘Molly, you take good care of me.’
‘Are you tired?’ asked Don. ‘Shall I show the girls the rest of the house, I know they’ll love it.’
‘It’s not like it was, my boy.’
‘We don’t mind, do we, it’s years since I was here.’
‘This is the kitchen,’ said Don. China sink, one table, pots and pans hanging from the beams. ‘Hetty said it was impossibly archaic. We used to come here every summer. This is the breakfast room.’ An Aga, a long table, a sofa under a window which looked out over the moat. A stone floor. ‘The dairy’s in there, nobody uses it now. You see, it was a farm here before Geoffrey.’ Up winding stairs. ‘That’s Molly’s room, it’s private.’ Another bedroom. ‘This is the solar.’ A pile of old furniture covered with dust sheets, a huge bed, carved. ‘I think Geoffrey sleeps downstairs now …’ More bedrooms, more stairs, Dee-Dee and Tessa were quite lost. ‘I always slept in here, it’s called the chapel because it’s above the porch. In winter there’s ice on the inside walls, can you imagine? We only came here once in the winter, though … This room’s above the hall, my sisters slept in here.’ The ceiling had fallen in, there was more unused furniture. Don examined some. ‘I think it’s his mother’s, my great-aunt, it all came here when she died. Oh look, the hat stand, I do remember that …’ Up more stairs, down more stairs, narrow corridors, everywhere damp and dusty and crumbling. Don looked out of a window at the courtyard. ‘I love this place,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘What will happen when Geoffrey …’ Dee-Dee couldn’t bear to think of him dying.
‘I suppose it’ll be sold. George said it should have been sold years ago. Geoffrey could never really manage it. When we used to come down George used to help, but … I don’t know, Geoffrey wasn’t well, we grew up, Hetty and George, they’re getting old too … I like Geoffrey, I wish I’d seen more of him now …’
‘It’s so sad,’ said Dee-Dee and a tear ran down her face.
Three of them in a car all the way back to London and Dee-Dee sobbed copiously because Geoffrey was going to die. He had bravely walked to the door to see them off, leaning on a stick and helped by Molly, and that was Tessa’s last memory of him, a sick gentleman in a dressing gown.
‘Bye-bye, Don old boy, come again soon.’
‘I will, Geoffrey, I promise, I’ll come and see you.’
‘Goodbye, ladies, so pleased to have met you. Goodbye, goodbye,’ leaning on Molly and waving his stick until they were all out of sight.
Some weeks later, Don was with Tessa. She was painting a mural in a friend’s flat in Fulham. She was covered in paint and the walls and the floor were covered in it too, but it was cool, it was OK.
‘… And that’s the sea, where all living things come from, and these are the molluscs and the reptiles and the whole of evolution,’ said Tessa, splash. ‘And at the top is man in the clouds, and the sun is Ra the sun god giving out light and inspiration.’ Splash, a shower of yellow droplets splattered Don.
‘I’m going to see Geoffrey again,’ he said.
‘Good, I am pleased …’ Splash, red paint.
‘But I can’t take you this time, I’m afraid, you see Hetty wants me to persuade him to go to a hospice.’
Tessa stopped. ‘That’s heavy.’
‘Isn’t it, but the doctors say if he doesn’t he’ll die in three months, if he goes to a hospice he might …’
‘Linger for years … Shit, Don, Geoffrey’s pure, he’s real, it makes me sick when people want to destroy that.’ She splashed black paint angrily. ‘Why can’t people do what they want? Do you think he wants to linger in a fucking-stupid-full-of-morons-hospice?’
Donald laughed. ‘No, he doesn’t, he’s very single-minded.’
‘Shit! That’s too much black, it doesn’t look inspirational any more.’
Don wasn’t listening. He wiped the paint off his shirt. ‘I like Geoffrey,’ he said.
It was September, a year since they’d visited St John’s. Geoffrey was still there, dying, but comforted by his life’s clutter, Molly and Don, who visited him frequently. Tessa and Dee-Dee were established in London. They called themselves artists but didn’t really paint much; they never stayed in one place long enough. They had moved twelve times since the previous spring. They worked evenings in a dismal Greek restaurant off the Charing Cross Road, but this too was temporary. They changed jobs as frequently as their addresses. When they’d first met Don that summer they had been ingénue suburban art-school students, but they were now real hippies, much to the bewilderment and disgust of their parents.
Dee-Dee and Tessa’s families had known each other for years but since their daughters’ abandonment of all that was proper and respectable a certain coolness had developed between the Fulks and the Stallards, one silently blaming the other. ‘If it wasn’t for their daughter and her ways …’ But to Tessa and Dee-Dee their parents were uptight, straight and uncool. What did they know?
Dee had grown her hair long. It was ginger-blonde and crinkly, like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden. She wore round-rimmed sunglasses day and night, dressed in purple with a purple crocheted pull-on hat, and moved in a mist of patchouli. She was always in love, and the latest was called Jeremy. He played the flute, often, and had wild curly hair. He looked like a dissipated cherub and he was only sixteen. They stayed in bed most of the day.
Tessa was leaner, dark and frizzy-haired, which made her look Caribbean, another source of irritation to her parents; in crimson crushed velvet, with her tarot cards and brown gypsy eyes, her intense murals and love of things Eastern, she was known as a freaky lady.
They lived in King’s Cross in the basement of a partially demolished house. Tessa had painted all the walls yellow to cheer it up, but it was so damp she preferred to go out. Her ambition, if it could be called that, was to live in Notting Hill. Don, of course, lived in Notting Hill. His flat was the top floor of a house overlooking a square. He lived in some style. Tessa and Dee-Dee owned virtually nothing – their clothes, some records – but possessions seemed to cling to Don like burrs on a tweed skirt. ‘Doing his own thing’ was working as a porter in Bonham’s, but he also had the knack of finding pieces of junk in Portobello that later turned out to be valuable. His flat was a cave of Indian paintings, hookahs from Morocco (bought last summer), Turkish rugs (the spring before), seventeen different types of tea and seventeen tea-pots, books everywhere and on the ceiling one of Tessa’s murals, ‘The awakening of Consciousness’. It was here she spent most her time.
It was Tuesday but it could have been any day of the week, and what time it was was unclear; Don’s four clocks bonged hours and half-hours intermittently. Outside, yellowing leaves fell in the square. It was misty. Tessa and Dee-Dee were lying on the floor listening to Astral Weeks. The music was dreamy and melodic, Van Morrison’s peculiarly nasal voice felt right for their mood. Don’s room was autumnal too, brown, yellow and crimson. They were sad. Geoffrey had finally died, Don was at the solicitor’s with his father, the will was being read.
‘The Hall will be sold. Who will buy it?’ asked Dee-Dee on the goatskin rug.
‘Somebody,’ said Tessa.
They were smoking dope and were very stoned. Curiously the smell of hashish reminded her of the musty smell at St John’s. Dee-Dee started crying again, she had been doing this on and off since they first heard and that was a week ago.
‘Another time another place …’ sang Van Morrison.
‘Death’s not a bum trip,’ said Tessa; ‘it’s just moving from one thing to another like …’ but she couldn’t think what it was like.
‘We could have gone to the funeral,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Funerals are for family, anyway we only met him once.’
Then Donald burst in. Tessa and Dee-Dee were stretched out on the floor; the atmosphere in the room was definitely comfortable, but Don jumped over both of them and ran to the kitchen.
‘God, I need a drink.’
‘Don, cool it, what’s happened?’
He sat on the floor and poured himself a cup of whisky.
‘What is it, have you been busted?’
He looked at their serious faces and began to laugh. ‘Geoffrey’s left me St John’s.’
‘Far out!’
‘He has, all of it, the whole bloody place, birds’ nests and all!’
‘Oh, Don!’ said Tessa and Dee-Dee in unison.
He poured himself another cup of whisky.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Dee-Dee, all anxious.
‘Do? I’m going to live there.’
‘That’s wild,’ said Tessa.
‘Like Geoffrey … and there’s money, too, that furniture of his, it’s valuable, it’s not rubbish … and the paintings … Hetty and George got the best things, two Stanhope Forbes and a Morrisot, we thought they were sold years ago …’
‘Oh, Don, what are you going to do?’ said Dee-Dee again.
‘Anything, anything I like …’ and his face took on a familiar far-away look.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2bf202fc-0a8a-505d-a896-1d0ce3ca1c72)
So, Don went to Suffolk and Tessa and Dee moved into his flat. It was a satisfactory arrangement, for Notting Hill was the centre of the underground universe. Here were crash-pads for drop-outs, the Electric cinema and a macrobiotic restaurant. Here were happenings, music everywhere and enough marijuana to ensure everybody was stoned. Life at the flat was unscheduled, unrestricted. They woke and slept as they pleased and there were always people, thumping bongos, strumming guitars, dancing, reading poetry and smoking dope. To Tessa and Dee-Dee this was freedom.
Don led a nomadic life between London and Suffolk. He bought a van to ferry Geoffrey’s furniture to sell in auctions. He was trying to raise money to restore St John’s. The builders had started re-roofing, re-plumbing. What he was going to do with the place was a source of endless discussion; a hospice for the dying? ‘but Geoffrey wouldn’t have liked that’; a museum of Eastern Art? That idea lasted two days; a free school ‘where children learned through their own experiences in the here and now and adults could change their perceptions of reality …’ But somehow anything to do with schools meant regulations and planning permission. The idea that was most consistent was to ‘fill the Hall with interesting people all sharing and co-operating …’, but St John’s was only slightly more than a ruin.
The following August, Tessa, Dee-Dee, Jeremy and a person called Edgar Bukowski from New Orleans all attended the Festival of Communes at the Roundhouse. This was ‘a big informal information-exchanging and food-sharing meal and meeting for Communes and people interested in Communes plus (perhaps) chanting and other signs of togetherness plus (perhaps) Quintessence and Third Ear Band’. In long dresses, loons, beads and bare feet, they danced, drummed and laughed, experiencing togetherness and being and felt it was as important as Woodstock. Don was there too, conspicuous with schoolboy hair and brown polished shoes, talking avidly to long-haired anarchists, but his communal ideas were hardly being clarified.
The sixties were over. Hendrix was dead, Janis Joplin was dead, the Beatles had split up, the Isle of Wight was a muddy memory. Uncertainty and doubt were creeping into the earthly paradise. Tessa and Dee-Dee in Don’s flat were restless. Previously their constant moving had satisfied a need for change, a feeling that if they stopped long enough to accumulate possessions and familiarity with a place then they would be settling down, or, worse still, be straight. They feared acutely normality as displayed by their parents’ uneventful lives in deepest Middlesex. But in the year that the old money was abandoned and in came tinny decimalisation, they began to wonder, ‘What now?’
Dee-Dee, Jeremy, his flute and an alarmingly small amount of money hitch-hiked to India to find the truth. They went after an all-night party on a damp November morning. Tessa stayed behind. She felt there was nothing she could find in India she couldn’t find in Notting Hill; after all, India, the Taj Mahal and everything were just places. The real truth was inside. Her restlessness was spiritual; she became inert. The crashers at Don’s flat were inert too. They lay on the floor to music, usually stoned or, more usually, tripping. Edgar Bukowski was now a permanent resident. He was a chunky six-foot with long lank hair in a ponytail. He claimed to have met Bob Dylan in a jazz bar in New Orleans. He said, ‘Hey, Bob, I love you,’ and Bob said, ‘Man, that’s cool.’ It may not have been true but it gave Edgar Bukowski kudos. He and Tessa were lovers. There were other people who were Tessa’s lovers, both men and women, but during that winter Edgar had precedence. Together they blacked out all daylight in the flat, consulted the tarot, read Alistair Crowley, listened to the Doors and Captain Beefheart, and embarked on an inward journey to darkest parts. Here, the Queen of Swords was a fiery red and sliced the air with her weapon, the unforgiving chariot crushed them underfoot and the dogs of hell bayed to the moon as crayfish crawled out of a primeval slime. The walls of Don’s flat shook, grey-faced half-dead once-people moaned, Edgar’s face crawled like the crayfish and they made love, but it wasn’t love but something like hate, deadly and punishing.
A spring morning; Tessa pulled away the black cloth over the bathroom window. She had just been sick. The light came in cold and slicing. She didn’t know what day it was. Avoiding her reflection she stumbled back to where six or seven people were on the floor. There was no sound, the air was foetid. She pulled away the black cloth from all the windows but even harsh daylight couldn’t wake them. Then someone rolled over snored.
Angry, she began to kick them.
‘Hey, man, wha’s happening?’
Other people woke. ‘Cool it, what’s the problem?’
‘Get up! Get up! Get up!’
‘Heavy games, lady.’
‘Cool it.’
‘It’s a raid,’ shrieked Tessa.
At these words there was instant panic. They scrambled for the door, falling over each other. ‘Beat it, it’s the Fuzz,’ and they crashed down the stairs and into the street.
Tessa watched from the window and laughed. They ran down the road like surprised rats, not even noticing a complete absence of policemen.
Now she was alone. Edgar was not there. She vaguely remembered he had gone at some point in the night, but she didn’t care. She locked the door, which was something that had never been done before.
Feeling sick again, she hauled herself to bed. ‘Oh shit … oh Christ … oh God … oh Jesus …’
Some days passed. There was a knocking at the door. Tessa thought it must be Edgar and stayed put under the grimy sheets. She blocked her ears. Edgar was six foot plus, he could kick down any door. She waited.
But it couldn’t have been Edgar; the noise was weak, almost scratching, like a wounded animal that had crawled home.
‘Tessy, Tessy, where are you, where are you? Let me in, Tessy, please let me in.’
Tessa sat up. It was Dee-Dee.
There was much hugging and tears. ‘I thought you’d gone away, Tessy, I really did.’
‘Here I am, sort of … did you go to India?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow, and was it amazing?’
‘I don’t know … I suppose it was … it was weird …’
‘Where’s Jeremy?’
‘He’s in Goa playing the flute.’
Dee-Dee was very thin. Her eyes looked huge, like a lemur’s.
‘I had enough, I thought I’d come back …’ She began to cry. ‘Tessy, it was awful, it was worse than a bad trip, and we had no money, we had to beg, but there’s so many beggars … and I got sick, I don’t know, I ate dahl off a stall … I got sick in Afghanistan too, but that wasn’t too bad … Afghanistan’s great, the people are tribal and the women wear veils and you never see them … and the deserts … I mean I saw a real camel and a mirage. I did.’
She blew her nose on her skirt.
‘But India was so full and they’re all dying, even the babies.’ And she dissolved into sobs.
‘So you didn’t find a guru, then,’ said Tessa after a while.
‘Everyone in India’s a guru.’ Dee-Dee was hardly ever bitter. ‘We were supposed to be going to an ashram near Poona but I wanted to lie down all the time and then we went to Goa. I was pretty flipped out by Goa. It was like paradise, and we got sort of stuck … then I was in hospital, and when I came out I just couldn’t get into it any more … Jeremy kept phoning his mum to send him more money, but I didn’t want to do that, I’d rather beg … so I went to Delhi and met some Australians.’
‘Did you see the Taj Mahal?’
‘The Australians took me, they had a minibus, and the Taj was really magical and special, I wanted to stay. We waited for the moon to rise, and we saw a deserted palace called Fatehpur Sikri … Then the Australians took me to Kabul, they were called Rod and Mike, they were great …’ She sighed. ‘They wanted to see the inner land and the great statues but I wanted to get home. I met a lorry driver called Dick and he was going to Manchester so I took a lift.’
‘And here you are.’
‘I’ve just come back from Manchester. We were in a hotel. He wanted me to stay, but he was married, Tessy, he had kids, and, I mean, he was sweet and all that, but he was so straight …’
She lay on the bed. ‘I’m so tired, I want to stop moving.’
She gazed at Tessa’s painting on the ceiling, ‘The Awakening of Consciousness’, much obscured by smoke and dirt. ‘What about you?’
Tessa came and lay next to her. ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed too; ‘I just kicked everybody out and locked the door. I’m sick of hash and acid and junk … and people dossing … and Edgar … he’s heavy, he’s on junk, anyway, I suspect he’s trying to score …’
‘What shall we do, Tessy?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know any more.
They might have slept for a whole day or it might have been two. When Tessa woke it was very early morning and the sun was beautiful and the birds were singing, and she felt clear and pure.
‘Wake up, Dee-Dee, wake up.’
‘Tessy, what is it?’
‘Listen, wake up you mug, I know what we must do, I’ve just realised … we must live here and make it beautiful, like when Don was here. I’ll paint it and we can get pretty things.’
‘Oh, Tessy!’
‘And flowers and everything. We’ll clean it and it’ll be ours and we won’t have dossers …’
‘Oh, Tessy.’ Dee-Dee had started to cry.
‘There won’t be any Edgars or Jeremys laying heavy trips on us, it’ll be our space, we’ll do what we like.’
‘I could do knitting …’
‘And I’ll paint, and we’ll cook real food, not rubbish, and get strong and powerful … We’ll do it now, come on Dee, we’ll get some food now.’
And they bought six croissants and took them to the park and ate them by the boating pond, shivering in the spring sunlight, and Dee-Dee puked hers up but it didn’t matter, and back at the flat they began to clean and clear it, and Tessa sold all her hash and they bought paint and bleach and washing powder, and they scrubbed and scrubbed and Dee-Dee cooked a big pot of stew, and after two weeks she wasn’t being sick any more, and Tessa made bread and Dee-Dee started to knit a stripy jumper.
After two months the flat was how they wanted and Dee was becoming pink again. In the evenings they listened to early Incredible String Band and wept buckets and Nick Drake and wept buckets, and Astral Weeks and A1 Stewart and Donovan and Bob Dylan and all the songs of the innocence and peace they loved and wanted to re-create.
It was early afternoon. Tessa and Dee-Dee were not doing much but they were happy. It was May. Dee had picked a branch of cherry blossom from the square and put it in a jug on the kitchen table. Then Don arrived.
‘Well, this is very different,’ he said, looking round.
‘Don, I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I was up before Christmas.’
‘Were you?’
‘I think you were tripping … actually I think everybody was tripping
‘Dee-Dee’s here, she went to India and back.’
Dee rushed up and kissed him. ‘Don, is the countryside beautiful? India was awful and I got sick, and Jeremy’s still there, and Edgar left and never came back, and Tessa makes bread now …’
‘Tell us about the Hall, Don.’
Don laughed and sat down. ‘Oh, it’s still a wreck, but I love it, Tess, it’s going to be amazing. I sleep in the hall by the fire and read Geoffrey’s books and I watched the spring coming in and now summer’s coming, there’s martins under the eaves and a kingfisher in the moat, and five ducklings. There’s just me, Molly’s Charlie’s not well now, so they moved to a council house in St Lawrence.’
Don was wearing a pair of Geoffrey’s tweed trousers held up with braces. His hair was longer but he looked different from anybody else they knew. His face was fresh and healthy. Dee got bread and honey and they ate thick slices.
‘Are you down in London to sell something?’ asked Tessa.
‘No, I’ve come to see you.’ He smiled. ‘The flat looks good …’
Tessa and Dee had hung old lace at the windows, ‘The Awakening of Consciousness’ was painted over white, pretty china from the antique market stood on the kitchen shelves. Dee-Dee and Tessa wore thirties print dresses and coloured scarves.
Don nodded. There was something on his mind. Any minute now he was going to say ‘I’ve got a really good idea,’ but he didn’t, he finished his bread and honey. ‘So, Edgar’s gone. I didn’t really like him.’
‘He was weird, smack wasted him.’
‘Hmmm.’
Dee put on a record, I Looked Up by the Incredible String Band. Tessa rolled a joint. They sat on the floor.
… Each moment is different from another, each moment is different it’s now, ow, ow …
‘I’ve been thinking,’ began Don, and Dee-Dee and Tessa glanced at each other, ‘About St John’s. I can’t live there always on my own, sometimes I think I’d like to, but there’s money … one needs money. Geoffrey couldn’t do it and he had more money than I, and anyway, it’s selfish, isn’t it? I feel I want to share St John’s because it’s so wonderful, but then there’s another question, with whom? I’d like to start a community, there’s some already in Norfolk and Suffolk and they seem to be going fine. I went to see one and asked them “How do you know who the right people are?” and they said “You soon find out.” But I don’t want to make mistakes. St John’s is special, it’s got something, I suppose one calls it History. It would be a waste if unappreciative people lived there … There’s enough land, it’s got to be cleared, of course, but that could be done … What I’ve seen, the most successful communities are where people work hard, like Findhorn and monasteries. I’ve just been to stay at Downside, being Catholic does have advantages … the ritual, the prayer, the work, the belief keeps them going … but what’s our creed, “The road of Excess leads to the palace of Wisdom” … do we still believe that? Must we still base our identity on intensified experiences, tune in, turn on, drop out, wait for the next high? You see, I’ve been finding this out. The days and the seasons have their own rhythms, in the countryside one really notices it. In the town, OK … it’s a fine day. It’s sunny; it’s not, it’s raining, but since I’ve been at St John’s each day is different.’
Each moment is different from another, each moment is different it’s now, ow, ow …
‘Yes, that’s it. The leaves open in the spring, slowly each day, every minute there’s a change. When the snowdrops came out I cried, I did, it wasn’t sentimental, it was joyful. Winter’s dead, spring’s here! I never felt that in London … It’s medieval. Ancient people lived much closer to nature. The winter must have been long, long and dark, then the spring and summer. Wonderful! You don’t shiver any more … God, I was cold this winter, I was bloody freezing … but now, the hawthorn’s in blossom and the elder.’
He looked at the bough of cherry in the jug. ‘… and here I am in London.’ He smoked the joint.
‘I get fed up with London,’ said Tessa. ‘Parties and people talking, doing the same things, smoking dope, getting laid …’
‘But we’ve made it nice here,’ said Dee-Dee.
When you find out who you are, beautiful beyond your dreams …
They were silent. The record came to an end. Don’s face took on a distant look, reminding Tessa of a soldier on a war memorial.
‘Listen,’ he said, and they listened, to the electric hum of the fridge, the cars on Holland Park Avenue, an aeroplane, people outside …
‘What I hear at St John’s is timeless, it’s been heard since forever; wind, lapwings, ducks on the moat. Must I be the only person to hear it? … Come back with me, we’ll be the beginning, we’ll find more people. “Why may we not have our Heaven here and Heaven hereafter too?” Why not?’
They had not expected this at all.
‘Yes, you two, you’re prefect, I can see it … it’ll be hard work, but you don’t mind about that …’
They stared at him.
‘We’ll clear the land and grow vegetables. There’s two acres, we could be eating our own food.’
‘Oh,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Come on then.’ He stood up.
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Why not? I’ve got the van outside. All this—’ he glanced around ‘—Bring it. It’s yours, isn’t it?’ he began to unplug the record player.
Dee-Dee and Tessa in the middle of the room faced each other. Dee-Dee was becoming tearful. ‘Tessy, what shall we do?’
But Tessa was certain. ‘We’ll go.’
It wasn’t until they arrived at St John’s in the dark that they realised the enormity of their decision. Only the great hall was inhabitable; the rest of the house was a pile of furniture and rubble. On everything was a layer of white plaster dust. There was no electricity.
Dee-Dee and Tessa stood in the damp gloom of the great hall. Don, with a torch, sought out kindling to make a fire. In front of the fireplace was a large mattress and blankets. Tessa and Dee-Dee sank onto these.
‘I’ll light the Aga,’ said Don. ‘It takes a bit of time, but then we can have hot water. How about some food, are you hungry?’ Tessa and Dee-Dee’s faces were blank. Don sat next to them. ‘Well, it is primitive, but you get used to it.’ The fire was beginning to burn and smoke. ‘It does that,’ said Don, poking it. Tessa and Dee-Dee coughed. Wind blew down the chimney. Tessa thought of their comfortable flat in Notting Hill, now packed in Don’s van. She felt too tired to move. Don went to the kitchen to coax the Aga. They wrapped themselves in blankets and gazed into the smoke.
‘Oh, Tessy,’ whispered Dee-Dee.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Tessa, not sounding very sure.
Don came back with bread and soup. ‘It’s nettle gruel, I picked them yesterday.’ He lit a large candle and placed it by the fire. There were no spoons so they drank straight from the bowls. It was lukewarm.
‘This is our first meal here,’ he said solemnly. ‘It’s a celebration, we have begun a new existence. It’s not going to be easy. We have chosen to live in this ancient and wonderful house. We have given up comforts … At the moment what we see is the ashes, but we will be like the phoenix and rise out of the ashes.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No,’ said Tessa.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Nor am I,’ said Don, ‘but I think we need a prayer; prayer’s very strengthening.’
‘We could pray to the spirit of the house,’ suggested Tessa, feeling very much that St John’s was a living being they were going to capture.
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Don was very excited. ‘Let’s join hands, then … and close our eyes … how shall I start?’
They sat in a tight circle. The fire crackled. ‘St John’s, you have seen many people … um … look down on us now and have mercy … we have not come to destroy but to rebuild … we want to see you filled again with a working community as it was … oh, gosh … ages ago … St John’s, have mercy on us and give us strength, you were built by men, but have outlasted men, you have stood through storms and wars. Help us to achieve our purpose, to become a centre of inspiration.’
Tessa listened, to the wind in the chimney, the fire, the silence of a country night. She opened her eyes. Dee-Dee and Don were smiling at her. ‘Phew,’ said Don, and wrapped himself in the blanket too.
‘That was beautiful,’ said Dee-Dee, all dreamy.
‘This soup is disgusting,’ said Tessa, and they all laughed.
‘Where shall we sleep?’ asked Dee-Dee after some time. The fire was nearly out.
‘Oh,’ and Don was only slightly embarrassed; ‘I thought perhaps you could sleep here with me …’
Tessa put down her pencil. She had finished. Then what happened, she thought as she picked up her things. Dirty hippies have a sex orgy. But as she walked back to St John’s she was angry. It hadn’t been like that, it hadn’t been sordid, it had been beautiful and special … she opened her car door and Mirabelle came running out of the house.
‘Have you finished? Do have some more tea.’
‘I have to go.’
‘How’s it coming on?’
‘Oh … fine … it hasn’t changed much,’ said Tessa, off guard.
‘Changed? Then you’ve been here before?’
‘Oh … only once … years ago … in the seventies.’
‘Then you must have known the … previous occupants?’
‘No … not really, friends of friends, you know.’
‘Bernard said they left the place in a terrible state. And that little girl …’ She quivered. Tessa said nothing. There was an embarrassed silence.
‘Well, well … they knew all about vegetables and flowers and things, so Bernard says … are you sure you won’t have more tea?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow at nine-thirty,’ said Tessa, and left.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_deff06f1-b6a4-57e1-9a1e-975515e93ea9)
Tessa woke in her hotel room in Bury St Edmunds. She had been dreaming about Dee-Dee. Whenever she dreamt about Murray or Don she woke feeling angry, but a dream about Dee-Dee always left her sad. She had close female friends now; Fiona, who worked in the gallery in Bath, and Bunty who she went cycling with, but nobody was as close as Dee-Dee had been.
As far back as she could remember Dee-Dee was there. She came to play every other Saturday. Tessa was an only child. Her parents felt she needed ‘company’. Her dream was vague but what remained was a picture of Dee-Dee, crinkly gingery hair, wide blue eyes, pink cheeks and freckles, the little girl and the adult fused into one. She wondered, but only briefly, what Dee looked like now. With this thought she got out of bed and drew the curtains.
It was sunny, a good day for sketching. She wished bitterly she was back in her house. The hotel room with apricot sheets and curtains depressed her; there was nothing here she could use to strengthen herself. She ran a bath. At least the bathroom was stark and white. It was only seven o’clock.
Two girls in the garden with all the dolls. They were playing hairdresser’s, Dee-Dee’s favourite game, or rather she was playing and Tessa was watching.
‘… And this one’s called Dibby and she has beautiful yellow hair and I’m going to plait it and put blue ribbons on, and this one’s called Dobby and she has beautiful black hair and I’m going to make it all curly …’
She stopped in the middle of her monologue.
‘Tessy, will we always be friends?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa; she couldn’t imagine it any different.
Dee-Dee began to brush the doll’s hair vigorously. ‘You’re full of tangles, you’re quite matty … Tessy, will we be friends even when we’re married?’ getting married was Dee-Dee’s other favourite game.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa, turning one of the dolls upside-down.
‘You mustn’t do that, she’s having a perm … Tessy, when people are married they don’t have friends …’
Tessa looked at her seriously. Dee-Dee had rosy cheeks and ribbons. She was pretty, Tessa wasn’t. Her parents called her ‘peaky’. ‘Why not?’ she said.
‘They just don’t. My mummy’s got no friends at all, and my daddy …’
Tessa thought, it was true, her parents didn’t have any friends either. The only person who ever came to stay was Auntie and she was horrible.
‘You see,’ said Dee-Dee, ‘when people get married and grown up they go and live in houses and they … don’t … have … friends.’ She threw the doll across the lawn. ‘You’re too bad, you’re too fidgety!’
‘Why can’t we still be friends?’ said Tessa.
‘Because we can’t, it’s not allowed.’ Dee-Dee was cross. She went all pink when she was cross.
Tessa thought again. She thought of next door and across the road and all of Lime Avenue and down to the shops and back. People in houses with babies and dogs and gardens. It made her cross too. She jumped up.
‘I want to be friends for ever.’
‘Well, we can’t!’
‘Why can’t we?’
‘We just can’t.’ Dee-Dee had started to cry. Any minute now Tessa’s mother would run out and ask what on earth was going on.
Tessa sat down. ‘Dee-Dee,’ she said, ‘why can’t we be different …’
Tessa moved her feet in the bath water. Ripples ran up her body. She moved her feet again and more ripples ran over her. She was lean and muscular. She used her body as a means of transport. These days she rarely connected it with pleasure.
Dee-Dee woke in the middle of their first night at St John’s.
‘Tessy, where’s the loo? I can’t remember, I’m dying for a piss.’
‘Oh, Dee … it’s on the other side and up some stairs.’
‘That’s miles away … I can’t find the torch … Tessy, there might be spiders …’
‘Shhhhh.’ But Don was fast asleep. They looked at him. He was lying on his back, both arms stretched out.
‘He’s exhausted,’ said Tessa, and they giggled.
‘Oh Tessy, don’t, I’ll wet myself.’
‘You’ll have to go outside.’
‘Somebody might see me.’
‘Dee-Dee you are a dope, we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘If I must.’
Wrapped up in one blanket, they stepped into the night.
‘Oh, look! Wow!’ The sky was filled with stars. There was a thin new moon and the constellations were clear, each star a pinprick of brilliance. The Milky Way reeled over the Hall.
‘It’s trippy!’ said Dee-Dee, breathless. ‘Oh, I must have this piss.’
‘Now I want to go too.’
They squatted by the wall. Their two streams of urine merged into one and ran gurgling down a drain. They stayed there gazing at the heavens.
‘I got used to squatting in India,’ said Dee-Dee. ‘Everybody squats … the stars there were … cosmic. Jeremy tried to tell me the names but I’ve forgotten.’
‘I used to have a book about stars, that one like a W is Cassiopeia and that’s Taurus the bull, and that’s Hercules …’
‘I can’t see it.’
‘In the book there were pictures, it made it clearer.’
They held hands under the blanket.
‘Don’s lovely, isn’t he?’ said Dee after a while.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it will be like this every night?’
‘Why not?’ and they laughed nervously.
‘Are you in love with him?’ asked Dee-Dee.
‘I don’t know, really … but I like him … are you?’
‘I don’t think so, but he’s special, you know.’
‘Well, we’ll share him then.’
‘Until?’
‘Until what?’
Then a shooting star skidded across the sky and disappeared behind the barns.
‘Ohhhh!’ exclaimed Dee-Dee.
‘It’s a sign,’ said Tessa.
Tessa drove to St John’s. It was a clear Sunday morning. There was much less traffic than the day before. The fields and villages flashed past without interruption. No shoppers, no energetic families. People were still in bed or reading the papers at breakfast. Yawning, stretching. Only much later would start the rush to the sea.
A sunny day, slow-moving puffy clouds, hardly a breeze. It was going to be hot. Farmers were deciding to start the harvest. Combines heaved down the narrow roads of the Saints, their drivers shut away in airless glass. Modern harvesting is dusty, noisy, unpleasant. But around St John’s the fields were quiet; after all, it had been an unpredictable summer. The wheat was golden, its grains plump and ripe. It was doomed.
Mirabelle was dressed and immaculate. She looked like she had been up for hours and her manner was just as brightly brittle. Tessa felt over-casual in old jeans and a white shirt. Mirabelle was in dusky pink with matching shoes and nails. Her lips were also pink. They framed her smiling teeth.
‘What a lovely day … I do love the sun … do you want coffee?’
‘Later perhaps.’
‘At eleven? Yes? I’ll bring it to you. Will you be in the same place?’
‘No …’ Tessa frowned at the Hall. The sun glinted on the church windows. St John’s appeared bold, defiant almost. ‘Does the walled garden still exist?’
‘The parterre?’
‘You could call it that … I’ll start there, it’s an interesting foreground.’
‘Bernard says the design is Tudor …’ she paused. ‘I’m afraid you might not see Bernard, he’s gone to Belgium. He’s after a clock … this is always happening. I hoped he’d be back for the holiday, but … well, there it is.’ She shook as if struck by a cold wind. ‘I might go out later … I think the gardener’s in, but he won’t disturb you.’
The walled garden was set some distance from the house on the other side of the barns. It was the old kitchen garden and even in Geoffrey’s day Molly’s ageing Charlie cultivated it, and it had not succumbed to the brambles and nettles that took over the rest of the grounds. It was the first section of St John’s they tackled. Later, when other land was cleared, they laid out the walled garden as a Tudor knot, with herbs, salad crops and soft fruit, bordered by low box hedges. It was still how Tessa remembered it except the grass paths had been replaced by sterile gravel. There was a statue in the centre, a marble Victorian lady pretending to be Greek. Tessa sat by her, and looked towards the Hall, framed by the arch in the wall.
That first summer, when Adam and his two Eves lived in Paradise. They knew little about gardening. Don sold his van to buy tools and they sowed beans too early and peas too late. Consequently they lived off bread and cheese and apples. But it was summer and it was glorious. They swam in the moat, sunbathed nude, walked everywhere and discovered empty churches and cautious farmers. They carried bagfuls of shopping three miles. They had bonfires every night, burning away dregs of years left behind by Geoffrey. They hacked at brambles, burnt those too, and in the walled garden dug up weeds and also things they had just planted.
By the fire in the great hall in the evenings Don read Huxley’s Island.
‘Listen to this. He says here that everybody in Pala has to dig for two hours a day. Well, he’s right, isn’t he, digging’s so … physical, isn’t it? Digging’s the only work one should be doing, not sitting at a desk, where does that get you? It makes you senile.’
‘I’m knackered,’ said Tessa.
‘Of course you are, but don’t you see it’s doing you good. Winstanley had something to say about it, now where’s Winstanley?’
Wherever Don was there was always a book. The great hall was filling up with dusty tomes rescued from other parts of the house. Winstanley was underneath Paradise Lost.
‘Listen to this … Tessa? Dee-Dee? Is she asleep? This is about the diggers: “Let everyone that intends to live in peace get themselves with diligent labour to till, digge and plow the common and barren land to get their bread with righteous moderate working among all moderate minded people. This prevents the evil of idleness.” Isn’t that right? Have you ever worked so hard? And weren’t we idle before, bumming around?’
Tessa lay down. Dee-Dee was breathing regularly and gently; it was soporific. Tessa felt as if every muscle in her body had been stretched, but she liked this new feeling. I am strong, she thought. She was much stronger than Dee-Dee and probably more than Don.
‘… To get their bread with righteous moderate working …’
They bought their bread in Bungay.
Through the doorway into the walled garden came the gardener; balding, red-faced, old cardigan, cord trousers, cap. Standard rustic. He was pushing a wheelbarrow. He looked like a Hoskin. Molly’s Charlie was a Hoskin.
‘Morning,’ he said. He looked at her strangely, but then most people looked at her like that. Perhaps it was the flashes of red in her hair like the crest of a strange bird of paradise. ‘Ah, ha.’ He put down his wheelbarrow.
‘The garden’s lovely.’
‘Flowers! You can’t eat they.’
‘I wanted to say your Savoys are splendid.’
‘Not a bad crop,’ he nodded critically. ‘I eats most of it myself. Er and ’im, what they don’t eat I gets and ’im ’e’s never here and ’er, she don’t eat.’
‘Bit of a waste of time, then?’
‘I think ’er freezer’s full, I think ’er’s got ten freezers … work on a Sunday, too. I got to keep it smart, some high-faluting type’s getting it put in a book.’
Tessa smiled. ‘That’s me, I’m doing sketches.’
He snorted. ‘I hope they pays you.’
‘And I hope they pay you.’
‘Oh, they do that. I said to ’im, there’s work for six here and ’ee said, I’ll pay for six … did you ever? Now, when them hippies were here, you heard about that?’
‘Yes.’
He laughed. ‘Those girls in their noddy nothings, and the lads. I hid behind a bush once, see.’
Tessa said nothing.
‘Now, Charlie Hoskins, he were my cousin and he said to me, “Now Bob, you wouldn’t believe what they gets up to.”’ He picked up the wheelbarrow. ‘But I tell you, they didn’t put nothing in the freezer. They grew it and they et it, now that’s right, isn’t it?’
Tessa resumed her work. She didn’t believe for a moment Bob had hid behind a bush. She was sure that story was circulated by anyone who visited the local pubs. She well knew they had been objects of amusement. They were tolerated and later even liked, but the Hoskins, the Becks, the Palmers, and others who were the inhabitants of the Saints, could never understand why Don and his friends chose to live unheated, with dirty clothes and bare feet.
Don was respected in a strange sort of way. He was ‘gentry’, one of them, moneyed and mad. ‘Old man Bell’, as Geoffrey was known, was revered. ‘In Old man Bell’s day’, that golden age, prewar, pre-tourist, pre-European Community, when the pubs were smoky, with rickety chairs and lino floors, and the men played cribbage.
They discovered one of these pubs in a village called St James, which had even fewer houses than St John’s. The George was shabby. The bar was the size of a small sitting room. There was one table, some benches and a fire, even though it was July. They went there to find something to eat.
‘Do you serve food?’ asked Don.
The landlord, thin and wrinkled, stared. His mother, small and very fat, stared too. Two men in caps by the fire started laughing.
‘What you want, then, chicken in a basket? Fish in a basket? Turkey in a basket? Nelson, get ’em roast beef in a basket.’
‘No food,’ said the landlord.
‘We’ve walked miles,’ said Tessa.
‘There’s no food.’
‘But there’s beer,’ yelled the men.
In the end Nelson’s mother made sandwiches, curled white bread and spam. They drank so much they could hardly stand.
‘This place is amazing,’ said Don. The beer was amazing too. The notorious George, open all day and most of the night. Don went back frequently.
It was late September. The harvest was over, the straw and stubble had been burnt, the fields were being ploughed. It occurred to Don, Tessa and Dee-Dee, like it occurred to the grasshopper in the story, that winter was coming and they were unprepared. Their only successful crop was spinach, and one can eat enough spinach. Don’s daily reading was The Cultivation of Vegetables and Flowers, printed in about 1888, but it was getting colder and working outside was not appealing. Inside was colder too. They moved their bed from the great hall to the solar. Don had kept Geoffrey’s carved bed. At night they wore thick socks and wool vests. They kept the Aga burning constantly.
‘The winter’s going to be fantastic,’ said Don; ‘wait until it snows, it’s like the snow palace in Dr Zhivago.’
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Lucy English
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 17.04.2024
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О книге: Lucy English’s third novel is set in a Suffolk commune in the Seventies where, beneath the blissful summer surface, the young inhabitants are caught in a downward spiral ending in tragedy.When Don, an aristocratic young Notting Hill poet, inherits a stately home in the depths of the Suffolk countryside from an elderly relative, he decides to move there taking with him an artist, Tessa and her best friend, Deedee. A menage a trois develops and as they form a commune and begin to grow their own vegetables, they live together in rural harmony. It is only when they decide to enlarge their group, bringing in strangers encountered at fairs and in pubs – the mesmerising and charismatic Jack, a single mother Helen and her troublesome six-year-old daughter, Beauty – that the balance is upset, tensions emerge and the friction builds to its horrific climax.