Life Class (17 page)

‘You’re not! That’s why I thought you were set on something modern. There are plenty of new-build houses in the area.’

‘Like the development that’s proposed up the road here?’ Dory queried.

‘Don’t remind me, I’ve still got the petition plus loads of letters to put into some sort of order to submit to the Council. But if the plan
does
go ahead, it would draw the sting a bit if you were living there.’

To live in the same village as her sister, love her though she did, was the very last thing Dory wanted. ‘The garden will be tiny.’

‘This is a bit of a turn around. I remember saying the same thing to you!’

‘And I thought you were keen for me to buy an
old
cottage!’

‘Seems to me,’ Peter interrupted, looking from one to the other with his eyebrows raised. ‘You two can’t survive unless you’ve something to argue about.’

‘I’m not arguing, I’m admitting Fran had a point. There are so many more possibilities in older properties. Kitesnest House needs all the panelling and doors stripped back or painted, and I’d want to knock the back living room into the kitchen, and the bathroom needs something similarly radical …’

‘Exactly. Why on earth do you want to give yourself all that hassle? There’s just one of you. By suggesting a cottage, I meant
small.
Somewhere that could be done up in a few months. Not a house that’s so vast and rambling it’ll take years of your life and all your resources!’

‘The grounds around it are stunning.’

‘But it’s not a proper garden, is it? It’s just trees and more trees.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

‘And where’s this sudden desire for a big garden come from? It’ll only become a burden.’

‘Shut up, Fran,’ Peter said, amiably. ‘Let Dory be enthusiastic. It’s her money, and her decision. You can’t orchestrate everyone’s life for them.’

Fran glowered at her husband. ‘I just want to save her from herself,’ she said huffily. ‘Dory will buy this house with unrealistic expectations about doing it up. Those property shows are an object lesson. There are as many disasters as there are successes. However much she may
want
to do it, overseeing such a project could exhaust and impoverish her. I’m only trying to save my sister from unnecessary heartache.’

‘Hello? I
am
here. And I’ve not even told you the best bit …’ Dory smiled, sitting back with a creak of her chair. ‘There’s a barn – or should I say “coach house”. There’s loads of parking. The property isn’t listed, which is an advantage. Electricity and water are already laid on. So I could add a loo, even a full bathroom. There are a couple of modern skylight windows in the roof, making it very light already, but I’d need more, particularly if I put in a second floor. The roof space is plenty deep enough. It would be a pity, as it would probably mean covering over the beams, which are unshaped tree trunks turned silver with age, but I’ll need to be hard-nosed and businesslike if I’m serious,’ she said.

‘But
are
you?’

‘Serious about the barn? I could easily convert it into a clinic …’ Unable to maintain the deception, she wondered why she’d even made the attempt. ‘Stefan uses it – used it – as a studio.’

‘Stefan? Stefan Novak?’

At the faint waft of smoke and the sound of feet crunching over the leaf litter, Dory turned, expecting to see the estate agent.

Walking out of the shadows towards her – hands deep in pockets, cigarette clamped in his mouth, a frown drawing his brows together – was her art teacher, Stefan Novak. With recognition his dour expression morphed to surprise.

‘Mrs Seymour?’

Simultaneously, ‘You! What …?’ blurted from her mouth. They both stopped speaking. An uneasy pause was broken by Dory.

‘You’re not viewing this house as well? The estate agent … Kevin didn’t say. Oh! He has another appointment at three, I’d better …’

‘It’s all right. I’ve let him go. I came to find … Stupidly, I didn’t make the connection. Mrs … Isad …’

‘Call me Dory, please?’ she implored, not for the first time. ‘Just a minute, you said you’ve “let him go”. Is this your house?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s extraordinary!’

‘Why extraordinary? You, I presume, want to buy a house. I want to sell. A coincidence maybe, but …’ He looked down at the ground.

Hesitantly, she began, ‘I just recalled an incident from my childhood.’

Stefan raised his eyes to hers. With a dawning certainty, that sense of
déjà vu
,experienced on the first day of life class, washed over her again.

‘I was with my sister and some friends,’ Dory continued with growing conviction. A slight frown – more of perplexity than irritation – crumpled his brow. ‘Until I walked through the woods to the boundary here I wasn’t sure it was the same house. We climbed over this fence. We met a boy.’

‘You caught me
in flagrante delicto.’
he supplied. ‘Peeing against a tree!’

‘It
was
you!’ Delight and surprise was followed by mortification. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, we must have embarrassed you.’

He gave a half smile. ‘It bothered me then. I wasn’t expecting a gang of girls to come crashing through from Grace’s garden. These days I’m made of sterner stuff.’

‘Wow! You’ve got to admit that’s a really
weird
coincidence.’ They’d turned, and in silent agreement, began to stroll slowly back down the slope. She breathed in, savouring the scents and the sounds. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with this garden, these woods.’ Once out of her mouth the comment sounded ludicrous, but Stefan didn’t query it.

‘It was great for me as a boy. My own personal adventure playground.’

‘Rudely interrupted by rude girls!’

‘I didn’t mind. Up till then I was home-schooled and didn’t mix much. It was interesting to meet other kids. So …’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘You
have
looked at the house? You’re not just here to revisit childhood haunts?’

‘I
am
serious about wanting to buy a place.’

‘But it’s rambling, run down, and old-fashioned,’ Stefan interrupted before she could add her qualification that it was probably too big for her needs. His pessimism woke a defensive instinct.

‘True, but that’s what makes it exciting.’

‘And would cost an arm and a leg to modernise, or so Kevin tells me.’ It was almost as if he hadn’t heard her, and was providing an easy get-out.

‘I’m not looking for perfection. It would be someone else’s perfection.’

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, as if surprised and gratified. ‘I can’t see it objectively. I grew up here but I’ve lived elsewhere for years. This was just the place my father lived. But I’ve been stuck here since before he died. You know how long it takes to probate a will? It’s been over a year and it’s only recently been settled’

‘And that’s why you’re selling now?’

‘I need the money. At least he left it to me, which, given our history, was unexpected.’ His eyes lost focus.

‘You didn’t get on?’

‘I’d not have been surprised to find it all left to the Maggie Thatcher Deification Society.’ Stefan looked down at his feet, then up again, as if aware further explanation was awaited. ‘There was a lot of baggage. I wasn’t what he wanted me to be. The name, Novak, is Czech. My parents escaped the Soviet crackdown, but after settling here, my mother found she was expecting a child. They’d been married for years. I’ve always suspected my arrival was unwelcome.’

‘Home tuition isn’t lightly entered into for an unloved, unwanted child. It requires a huge commitment of energy and ambition.’

‘Too much ambition. After my mother died I was sent to the Boys High School. But I couldn’t live up to expectations. There was always a gulf between my father and me. Age gap, temperament, aptitude, politics. Now I understand him better. Coming from their background, economic liberalism must have looked like the answer.’

‘They weren’t the only ones who thought that. But look what happened.’

Stefan inclined his head. ‘I was expected to agree with my father and follow in his footsteps. He just assumed I’d be an academic, or at the very least that I should have a profession he approved of. Instead, we argued about everything. I was determined to follow my own star.’

‘Art? The sculptures in the house are yours?’

He nodded, but then, drawing his hand down over his face, he shook his head. ‘But he never believed I’d do it.’

‘You proved him wrong. They’re fabulous.’

‘Have I? Sometimes I wonder why I bothered.’ Stefan regarded her steadily for a moment. ‘I was contacted when he got ill. He was deteriorating fast, so I came home, expecting it to be no more than weeks. But he lingered and then I found I was the beneficiary after all. It’s difficult, when you feel you don’t deserve it, to properly appreciate good fortune.’

His words resonated. ‘I know what you mean. Our mother died last year. It wasn’t that I didn’t get on with her, but my life had moved me to London, and those last few years after our father died, when she aged so suddenly …’ She paused. ‘It was Fran she depended on. But we inherited equal shares. For children, there’s no escape from that sense of guilt and inadequacy. I suppose it’s part of the package passed on by the previous generation, along with their genes.’

‘And when the parents die those feelings of regret and failure are magnified.’

‘But it sounds like you had the opportunity to redeem something in your relationship with your father, the chance to make some recompense by coming home to care for him.’

Stefan had been staring through the trees. He glanced sideways.

‘If there’d been anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have.’ Then he added, ‘But I suppose it’s a two-way thing. Parents have their own burden. Fear of falling short, of not saying the right thing at the right time, doing too much or too little.’

‘The latter was the kind of parenting I had,’ Dory said. ‘A kind of benign neglect. My parents, particularly my father, couldn’t be bothered with worrying about what me and my sister were going to do with our lives. It was left entirely up to us.’

Stefan looked at her for a moment then frowned. ‘Can parents ever get it right?’ He’d not mentioned a wife or children but spoke as one who knew.

‘Don’t ask me, parenthood is something I’ve avoided.’

‘You’re not …?’

‘Not married. I’ve recently split up from my partner, but we didn’t have children.’

Stefan nodded but added nothing. Dory had noticed no evidence of a woman’s recent touch in the house.

‘You haven’t said. Is there a Mrs Novak?’ ‘No.’ He seemed surprised. Either the question was intrusive or he assumed it was common knowledge. ‘I said … she died when I was ten.’

‘Your mother! No, I didn’t mean …’ Feeling stupid, she concentrated on the path. It remained uneven and undulating. A thick layer of leaves quilted the ground, but the slope was less acute. After a moment of silence he cleared his throat.

‘Sorry, I misunderstood you. There’s no wife, nor ever likely to be.’ The remark left a question hanging in the air, but Dory didn’t follow it up. Ahead of them was the back wall of the barn, where the arch of tree-cover gave way to open ground.

‘The fact you have the outbuildings makes this place particularly interesting. I’m looking for a house that has potential for running a business.’ Though keen to change the subject, she felt a twinge of guilt at misleading him. A dozen more paces and they would be back on the level and out in the light. Before she left she would have to confess that as someone on her own, the house was too big, too much of a liability.

‘What kind of business … a veterinary practice?’

A surprised laugh escaped her. ‘Where did you get that idea?’

‘You were interested in the skull. Didn’t you say you wanted to be a vet?’

‘When I was a little girl!’ Amazed at his recall, she elaborated. ‘That ambition went the way of fairy princess, pop singer, and prima ballerina …’

Dory’s foot slid. The world lurched and tipped. She uttered a strangulated cry as the inevitability – the indignity – of falling flashed up in her mind’s eye. The crunch did not come. Elbows, bottom, hands, and bag did not clatter to the ground in a humiliating sprawl. Instead, time was suspended.

The view before her eyes was altered. Through the web of interlacing branches of the tree canopy, the fading light had become an iris blue mosaic. Most of the leaves had fallen and the scent of autumn decaying to winter was in her nostrils. This is a magical place, she thought, and a pulse of unnamed emotion surged through her. With it came the comprehension that she’d been caught and held, and the beat of time restarted, ticking forward again. Aware now of the arms supporting her, everything was on the move again. The world tilted back to normal. Her scrabbling feet found secure ground. Her inward gasp of breath was the first she took.

‘Ooooh! Not very graceful! Thanks for catching me. That was quick thinking.’

‘Pure instinct.’ His arms were still around her. Her heart continued to race. She pulled away; the imperative to discover the cause of her slip overrode all else. Crouching down, she swept the leaves aside. An angled edge of rock protruded through the trodden earth by no more than a centimetre or two.

‘There’s the culprit,’ she exclaimed triumphantly, relieved to have found an explanation. ‘And the leaves beneath the top layer are slimy.’ Still crouched on the ground, Dory glanced round. Stefan was standing back, looking at her, not at the rogue ridge of stone. Disconcerted, she stood up. Leaves and twigs were clinging to the hem of her coat. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she said, brushing herself down. ‘How we have to find an excuse for tripping?’

‘To prove to the world we weren’t dodging pink elephants.’

To prove to
you
I’m not an incompetent, ditzy blonde, she amended in her head, but she gave a small, acknowledging laugh. Within moments they’d passed the propped ladder and emerged into the fading daylight. They stopped beside Dory’s buttercup yellow KA.

‘Talking of elephants,’ he gestured towards the house, with a twisted, sideways smile, ‘the white variety. Grace’s hovel next door hardly adds to the desirability of my residence.’