The Sea House (16 page)

24

On Sunday Nick suggested going to Hyde Park. Lily was lying reading on their bed, trying to turn her mind away from thoughts of college. The scramble for space to pin her drawings up, the crush of people, the pained look of her tutor as he caught her on the stairs. Why, he’d asked, had she not responded to his emails?

‘Nick.’ Lily sat up. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ He sounded cross.

‘I mean…’ She put on a smile. ‘It’s just in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never, ever suggested going to a park.’

Nick looked at her. ‘And that’s because…’ – he spoke slowly, as if he’d given the subject furious thought – ‘usually before I get a chance, you suggest it first.’

They stared at each other, coldly.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’

Hyde Park was dry and arid. There were patches of bare earth, hard ovals of baldness where too many people had hovered, playing rounders, at first base.

‘I’m thinking,’ Lily said, as her feet crunched and snapped the brittle stalks of grass, ‘of keeping the cottage on. It just seems a shame to give it up, when I’ve almost finished my work. We could spend August there, or you could visit when you have time off?’

Nick kept on walking, his eyes fixed on the lake. ‘How can you afford it?’

‘Yes, I know.’ Lily didn’t want to tell him. But she’d written to her bank, a month ago, and taken out a loan.

‘I don’t understand.’ He was frowning, straining for something Lily couldn’t see. ‘You need to get your work experience, we’d even pay you. It’s true, not very much.’

‘Yes.’ Lily felt sad. They were almost at the Serpentine, and she could still hear the traffic, roaring down Park Lane. ‘Maybe I’ll get a summer job in Steerborough. They might need someone in the shop, or I could waitress, serve cream teas. They need people in Eastonknoll.’

‘I was joking, you know, when I wrote to you about The Ship. What is it about you and –’

‘Waitressing?’ Her voice was sharp.

They walked on in silence, pushing past the people who were drifting, idling, shredding bread for ducks. At the tip of the lake, where it swept under the bridge, there was a café where once, when they’d first met, they’d stopped and had a drink. They’d had a fruit juice each, gritty and warm, in glasses without ice, and when the bill had come they’d gasped together at the price. Nick had put his arm around her and whispered into her ear, ‘I’ll bring you here for your birthday if you don’t behave.’ It had been a joke between them, an unlikely pavilion of their love, but now, heads down, they walked fast past it and up on to the road.

‘Now what? Lily stopped on the bridge, looking across the road at Kensington Gardens. ‘Shall we go back, or on?’ But neither of them seemed able to decide.

Lily had a huge bag full of summer clothes; towels and books and sandals, a straw hat buckling slightly at the rim. Nick watched as she piled more and more in.

‘But you’ll come next weekend?’ She tried to make it sound as if she were packing this multitude of things for him.

‘Yes,’ he agreed irritably. ‘Yes, I will.’

Lily’s car was waiting in the station car park. It was all alone, its bonnet dusty and its windscreen streaked with one long seagull’s dropping, hardened to a splash of green. All the same, she felt inordinately pleased to see it, and she wrapped her arms fondly round the steering-wheel as she drove over the slats of the level crossing and on along the road. Already she recognized the hedgerows, the field of pigs just by the turn, and there on the horizon the outsized cathedral and the legs of the water tower bearing down. Lily stopped at the village shop for milk and bread, and irresistible, on the counter, a Kinder egg, one each for Arrie and Em. Outside she scanned the shop window for anything that might resemble a job. There were cottages to let, a bike, a washing machine for sale, and on the door a handwritten notice.

Money found in Palmers Lane.
If the money is yours,
PLEASE
contact Mrs Townsend at Old Farm.

Lily read this notice twice, her hand over her mouth, looking round for someone to tell, but there was no one except a frail old lady who might for all she knew be Mrs Townsend herself. Running the message over in her mind, and laughing each time she came to the word ‘please’ she drove the car very slowly down the street.

Fern Cottage smelt unpleasant. Musty, mouldy even, as if all that brown furniture was never intended to withstand so much heat. She switched the kettle on and went into the sitting-room. The blanket had slipped down off the sofa and the curtains were half drawn. Lily ran her eyes over the bookshelf.
Knitting for Fun
,
Ornamental Sea Shells
, and her favourite,
Wines, Syrups and Cordials
, a book of recipes collected by the WI. The original price showed five shillings, but at some point, at some long ago summer fête, it had been marked down to two-and-six. Lily unlatched the windows and stared out on to the Green. There was no one there she knew. Two women stretched out beside a pushchair and a man following a toddler up the slide. Quickly she rearranged the blanket, tucking it in, plumping the cushions and gathering up the jug of flowers, the water evaporated, the stalks turned half to slime.

In the kitchen the kettle had forgotten how to switch itself off, and white clouds of steam were billowing against the windowpanes, rolling in a thick mist around the room. Lily made herself tea with the last scorched inch of water and took it into the garden, leaving the door and windows open to give the house some air. The garden was uncharacteristically neat. No washing on the line, no bikes, the shed empty and latched shut. Lily sat against the wall. She felt deflated. She could hardly admit it, but she’d been hoping to be welcomed home. The arms of the children round her, the chatter of their news, and behind them, Grae’s quiet smile.

She sat with her legs in the sun, her face in shadow, the sweet scent of a rose drifting from the climbers on the wall. From time to time she glanced up at Grae’s house. It was clear there was nobody at home, but it looked worse than empty. Closed. Abandoned even. Where could they be? Her heart looped over with the loss. And then it struck her. It was a mistake to have come back. She was lonely here, this wasn’t her home, and to steady and distract herself she reached into her bag and drew out her envelope of letters.

My dearest El,

I’m sitting here in our empty apartment, in our empty bedroom, for the last time. Tomorrow I shall sleep at Greenberg’s. The packing is done. All the furniture and boxes have been organized and wrapped in their red paper, and as I wait here with nothing but my case I am tired but relieved. The shipment of the furniture will happen any day now, and I do want to be there in London when everything arrives, so that I can pull out your cases and mine, before they’re put into a warehouse. You cannot be amazed that I have written so little. The packing was an enormous task. I had to stand over it, otherwise everything would have been mixed up. Your beautiful material from the linen cupboard I just managed to save, but the key to your writing desk was nowhere to be found. Now, something that I want from you. I want you to write to me about your life. How are
you getting on with the new people that you know? What do you speak about with them, and in what language? Have they all fallen under the spell of your loveliness? Your nut-brown hair and the downy little dent at the nape of your neck which luckily you can’t see or your head would swell to the size of a house. I want to know. Tell me by return of post.

Love, (sincerely,) L.

My El,

Today, on the most peaceful Sunday since your departure, nothing has come from you. Mr Field came to talk English with me, and our conversation became so very interesting that I’m sure he forgot to correct me. Yesterday I went to the Office of Emigration again, and I hardly dare weary you with the outcome, but next week I must go to the Department of Trade. It can’t go on for much longer now. But soon I know we will realize how little we have left behind here, and once I am with you, and as time goes on we won’t have to see people, who, as you so politely put it, ‘we are less fond of’. Here it is the most beautiful weather.

With all love, your L.

Lily spent the afternoon in the garden, reading, thinking, occasionally walking up the lane to the shop. She bought an apple, and some spaghetti sauce, and just before closing time a thick vanilla ice-cream dipped in white chocolate. Slowly, very slowly, she walked back to the Green, and each time she rounded the bend she was doubly disappointed not to see Grae’s car.

My El,

Have you been reading English newspapers? You need to understand the wording of the different advertisements for flats. We have the choice between hotels with bed and breakfast, £6 per week, £9 per week full board, or a furnished flat where we’d have to cook for ourselves or go to a restaurant, about £5 per week. Eventually, when we know where my office is going to be, we can get an unfurnished flat, and make a proper home. Perhaps you could get someone to explain London to you, which is
what I wanted to do with you, and will do, one day soon. You need to know about the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly areas, the parks, the City, and where one should live. I think, I can see the end to things here. Another ten days at most. Be strong, have courage.

Your L.

Later Lily walked out to the mill. She followed the soft plank paths, catching sight of the occasional figure to the left of her, up on the high ridge of shingle, standing above the level of the sea. But there was no one on the marshes, and she had the path to herself. She walked slowly, lulled by the swish and rustle of the sedge, past a hollow hill of hawthorn, its flowers scattered into the pool below it, leaving white petal bubbles on the surface like a witch’s stew. She sat on the pebble-chip wall beside the mill and watched the sun as it began to sink over the fields to her right, lighting up the undersides of clouds, turning them bright pink. She lay back as the sky changed around her, the pink fluffing out to pastel, merging with the last blue sweep of day. And then with a shock it occurred to her she didn’t feel afraid. Is this sensible? Am I being a fool? And she clambered up and stood on top of the wall. There wasn’t anyone or anything for miles and miles around. How strange. It was a new sensation. To feel completely safe, and it occurred to her that for years now, every time she’d stepped out on to a London street, into a city park, she’d been bracing herself for an attack. She looked behind her and almost cried out. The sky had turned to gold. Streaks and swirls and watermarks, so burnished and fiery that if you saw it on a postcard you’d laugh. It was reflected in the puddles, in the river, even in the sea, the waves of which were capped with copper as they rolled in.

The air between her fingers had changed. It was grainy, thickening with dark, and she could feel it, soft against her skin. Regretfully she eased herself off the wall, and walked back the way she’d come. She turned left at a signpost with a yellow arrow on its arm and walked up a springy path. Soon the path widened and she came out in a glade of green. There was a wood ahead, an island of shadow, and, as she turned to avoid it, she caught sight of the back of the bunker, its grey walls growing out of the ground. She stopped and listened, but there was nothing but the rustle of sedge. Very slowly she moved nearer, and bending her eye to a narrow window she peered in. She started back, and immediately bent to look again.

At the centre of the bunker a figure knelt over a candle. His face was closed off by a beard, his shoulders draped in shreds of black, and his fingers which fumbled for another match were greased and thick. She knew him. It was the man who’d stepped out of the gorse. The man who’d startled her. Lily breathed in deeply and peered around his room. His black plastic bed was still set up, and all around him were rolls of long black bags tied with elastic bands, as if the dustman had simply tossed them in. Bob the Bog. Em and Arrie knew him. It was possible the whole village knew that he lived here. There were bowls and cups and half-eaten packets of biscuits. Just then the man looked up. Lily stepped back. He’d seen her, she was sure of it, but there was nothing she could do. Slowly, so as not to abandon him too harshly, she walked towards the sea.

She climbed the shingle of the ridge and stepped along its top. In the distance there was the beginning of a fire and as she looked back over the salt marsh she thought she heard a bittern, its song like the echo of a gun. Eventually the Steerborough beach huts came into view, half submerged by sand, and she cut inland over the wooden bridge, back up to the village, where lights had been switched on in almost every window, orange in their glow. She opened the dark door of Fern Cottage and flicked on her own light and as she pulled the curtains she imagined her window shining out like a beacon in the dark.

25

‘I’ve rented it.’ Max felt the touch of Elsa’s fingers. ‘It’s mine!’

They were standing on the furthest point of land, up at the top of the estuary, looking back. The tide was low, the acres of sand separated into islands where children ran from pool to pool. Max looked inland towards the Sea House, its windows open, figures, sitting, happy on its steps.

‘The Vicar rents Little Haven every year for a two-week holiday.’ Elsa’s eyes were bright. ‘Little Heaven, the locals call it. So, I shall follow his good example and take the Sea House from the first of next month. I would have taken it before, but it was booked until then.’

There was a pause as they stood side by side.

‘May I visit you?’ Max asked.

‘If Gertrude can spare you.’

‘I meant for the day.’ Max bowed his head. His heart was racing. Had she rented the Sea House for him? And to hide himself he bent to pick up a stone.

‘Let’s walk,’ Elsa said and, slipping off her sandals, she let her toes sink into the sand. It was like a pudding, the uncooked dough of a cake, and shyly Max unlaced his boots and let his feet sink too. They walked south over the moving ground, skimming on before the sand encased them, looking back to see their footprints wobble out of sight.

Will your husband not mind? Max wanted to ask, when you move from his perfect house into a wooden hut? But with Elsa he was beginning to find that if he stayed quiet for long enough she would come round eventually to what was in his mind.

‘The Sea House belongs to a Mrs Bugg,’ Elsa told him as they splashed through an inlet, ankle-deep. ‘Usually she is here, but her husband is ill this summer and they must stay in London to be near the hospital.’ The sand had risen up into a long narrow island, and there were three boys from the village playing cricket in bare feet. ‘She used to be a war correspondent but now she writes about the countryside. More than anything, she does not want this village to be lost. Homes and jobs for the people of the land, that’s what she campaigns for. Last summer she wrote a play about the village, and we all came to watch it, weekenders and locals, and laughed at ourselves whether we wanted to or not.’ Elsa was walking out to sea, testing the depth, holding up her skirt. Max had to follow to catch at what she said. ‘I wrote to her and she said yes, do take the house. She hates the thought of it empty and unloved.’

Max was aware of people watching them. Modestly dressed ladies taking a stroll and a man throwing sticks for a dog. Elsa’s skirt was splashed with wet and her bun was beginning to unstrand. She stopped and looked up at the sky. ‘I can never get enough of it,’ she said and, as her back arched over and her head fell back, Max had to turn away to stop himself from slipping his arm around her waist.

Elsa, Elsa. Max pressed against the mattress, the pain of his desire for her uncoiling in his gut. He closed his eyes and, just as he was drifting into sleep, he realized he’d forgotten his house. He’d stopped searching, straining, fighting through each night. He’d look for it, he promised wildly and he sank into a determined sleep.

‘Gertrude,’ he ventured the next morning. ‘Do you know of a house that I could rent?’

‘Rent?’ Gertrude turned to him. Her eyes were wide, her mouth affronted. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Well…’ Max was unsure. ‘I’d like to stay in Steerborough and I thought… if I was in your way.’

‘But you still haven’t done my painting!’ Gertrude’s neck seemed extravagantly long, her head as fierce as a bird’s. ‘Finish my painting, that was the agreement, and then’ – she smiled to show she was capable of a joke – ‘you will be free to leave.’

‘I’m so sorry. Of course.’ Max had forgotten the canvas, leaning against the skirting, gathering dust. ‘I shall start on it right now.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. When you are ready, when you’ve finished your scroll.’ She stood up and he saw that her hands were trembling. ‘I promised Kaethe that I’d ask you to stay. I promised her, and I intend to keep my word.’

‘Yes… I only thought –’

‘No,’ Gertrude said firmly and she walked out of the room.

Gertrude was shocked to find that she was shaking. She stood over the kettle, letting the whistle scream, sickened to think she’d twisted Kaethe’s wish. But Max had taken her off guard. She’d been following the progress of his scroll and could see from the lengths of unfinished whiteness, and the tally of houses in her mind, that he had weeks to go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the steam, and she remembered, when Max first came to London, had sat all day in the tiny partitioned flat she and Kaethe shared, how much she’d disliked him then. Kaethe had fussed around him, used up her time and love settling him in, and it was only when Max had been interned, and Kaethe came to work with her at the war nursery, that her friend had time for her again. Maybe, she wondered, it was a mistake to have taken a sabbatical this year, to have left behind the distracting troubles of her charges, but after Kaethe’s death it seemed wrong to go on as if everything was the same. Gertrude tipped water into the pot, carelessly, letting one long splash scald red across her foot, telling herself all the while in a smooth practised voice that it was natural to want to cherish people, whether they were there to be cherished or not. It was natural but not necessarily in their best interests, and she took the pot and moved through to the next room.

‘Mrs Wynwell?’ she called, walking to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Mrs Wynwell, are you there?’

There was the thwack of a mattress and Mrs Wynwell’s voice came travelling down. ‘I’m just doing the beds,’ she said, and a moment later, red-faced, she appeared.

‘Will you tell Alf he needn’t come today?’ Gertrude smiled to show it was all right, she wasn’t angry, but all the same Mrs Wynwell looked at her, alarmed.

‘It’s quite all right,’ she urged her. ‘Just tell him he needn’t come.’

Mrs Wynwell’s face closed in. ‘As you think best,’ she said and, stamping harder than was necessary, she climbed back up the stairs.

Gertrude sat down in her chair. Now what would she do? She felt utterly bereft, and she wished the blackberries were ready so that she could force herself against the brambles, prick her fingers as she picked, enough to fill a basket, all smeared with juice and blood until she’d had enough. A book of recipes lay on the table.
Wines, Syrups and Cordials
. Gertrude flicked through them angrily. Gooseberry wine, hawthorn-berry wine, spinach, parsnip, pea-pod wine. Pussyfoot… Nettle beer… Dandelion – thought to be a tonic.
Collect a gallon of dandelion heads
… This very order made her smile, and she pulled down a large basket and stepped out into the lane.

Gertrude picked dandelions all morning. She scoured the village for them, plucking them up in clusters, the older ones snapping easily, the younger ones all oiled with milk, slipping through her hands. She roamed along Mill Lane, up and down The Street, pushing along the bridle way and up on to the Common. It was a perfect Steerborough blue and yellow day, impossible to be sad in. You could try, clamp down your jaw, shut up your mind, but then a breeze of birdsong would come whistling through, the lift of a horse’s hooves. There was a sweet salt smell in the air and Gertrude had to admit it was hard work being cross.

She arrived home at lunchtime and poured the flowers into her largest pot, the great soft fluff of yellow like a tub of chicks. ‘A gallon,’ she murmured, and she went out again.

This time she walked towards the Green, scouring the allotments behind the tennis courts, stepping out on to the marshland almost to the dunes, where she found dandelions by the dozen, small starry versions, clinging to the riverbanks, winding through the mounds of grasses in the lane below Hoist Wood. This time she was sure she had enough. She emptied her flowers into the pot and when she turned to find her apron, she caught sight of Alf.

‘Hello.’ She was ridiculously pleased to see him, sitting in his usual place. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m late.’

Very slowly Alf pulled something from the pocket of his shorts. Gertrude held out her hand, and Alf stepped over and laid a flower on her palm.

‘Thankyou.’ The dandelion was wilting, its petals closed in, its stalk shredded and wet. ‘Thankyou so much.’ And not wanting him to see how much it meant to her, she very carefully put it with the others in the pot.

They sat together for ten minutes, Alf examining his feet, Gertrude thinking, for once, about nothing at all, and then she roused herself. ‘Shall we make the wine?’ Alf stood up and Gertrude found the page of the recipe.
Boil one gallon of water
… She put two kettles on, and filled a saucepan, hoping the three would add up to enough, and while they waited they worked together to pare down the stalks.
Pour the boiling water over the flower heads
, the next instruction read, and very carefully she slooshed in the first kettle. A ripe green smell rose up, of heat and summer, and the bitter sap of stalks. The next pan sent the mixture to a soup. Gertrude poured more carefully now, sinking the flowers with a wooden spoon. She found a spatula for Alf and together they began to churn and mash. They were like two alchemists, making gold, plunging and stirring the tiny fins of fire. Gertrude leant sideways to study the page.
Leave for three days
… Three days! They had only just begun, and as if some kindly member of the WI were trying to console her,…
with an occasional stir
.

‘In three days’ time,’ she said to Alf – it occurred to her she was only pretending to be an adult – ‘will you come back and help me? We will have to strain it through muslin, add sugar, the rind of a lemon, and…’ – she checked the recipe – ‘bruised ginger’. How had she failed to read these instructions before? Her eyes skimmed down the page and she saw she would need corks, wax, bottles and the coolness of a cellar she did not have. ‘Well,’ she said aloud, ‘what’s the hurry? Saturday afternoon, we’ll do it then.’ Alf looked up at her and smiled and she saw that his first big teeth were cutting through. They were large and square, and Gertrude felt a pang to think that by the time the dandelion wine was ready his face would be quite changed.

Elsa and Max stood on the bridge like two poachers eyeing up their prey. There were new people renting the Sea House now. A group of watercolourists, two men and two women, who sat together every day painting the same view. Max wondered if they judged each other, comparing techniques, offering up criticisms of each other’s work, or if one was the teacher and the others, pupils, following a lead. Elsa inched forward. Come on, she said with her eyes, but Max hung back. The four were facing Eastonknoll, the outcrop of the town. He didn’t need, he told himself, to see four replicas of the lighthouse. Soon Elsa was leaning over, examining each picture, asking questions, listening to unimaginable replies. Max thought about his scroll. There was a green screen door on Palmers Lane that he wanted to paint. If you went close and pressed your face against it, the mesh cleared and you could see a perfectly tended vegetable patch, cabbages and brussels sprouts in neat, raked rows. He’d been sitting before it this morning, mixing up his colours for the day, wondering how he could create the solid mesh of it and still give an inkling of what was on the other side, and then Elsa had appeared. ‘Please,’ she’d said. ‘I’m lonely.’

‘Of course.’ Max got to his feet. ‘Of course.’ And he began packing his things away.