‘Oh, come o-o-on!’ said Nick, slapping the steering wheel in frustration. ‘He’s only got to reverse three yards and I can get past him. What’s he even doing round here anyway? Goon like that.’
‘Big problem in the countryside apparently,’ Dave said, ‘nothing else for them to do.’
‘I’ll give him something to do…’ muttered Nick ominously. All the same he looped one arm around the back of my head rest, rammed the car into reverse and with his gaze fixed on the rear window, accelerated recklessly around corners and up and down undulations in the road, until we were almost back at the cottage. Then he tucked in beside a drystone wall and waited.
All was quiet except for the sound of birdsong and a branch tapping out a rhythm on the roof and for a moment it seemed the van might have been a figment of our imaginations. But just as Nick was losing patience and seemed ready to pull out again, it came jerking and squeaking around the bend and the exaggerated slowness of its approach made me nervous. I squinted into the Transit’s windscreen, but the sun glanced off it, turning it into a vast silver rink, the only sign of life inside the slow back and forth of a talisman dangling beneath the rear-view mirror.
‘Uh-oh,’ Nick murmured, and his voice sounded suddenly small. There was a pause. A light breeze stirred the nettle patch. I could hear my heartbeat in my temples. Then a cacophonous roar, a squeal of tyres, a skitter of pebbles. I shut my eyes and braced for the impact… and braced… and braced… and then, warily, opened them again.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ hissed Nick as the van accelerated away in a cloud of filthy exhaust fumes, leaving the Range Rover unscathed.
‘What a cock!’ said Dave.
Jude and I laughed with relief.
Nick put the Range Rover in first gear, his hand trembling slightly on the gear stick, and accelerated away at even greater speed than first time round.
‘They don’t tell you about twats like that in Country Life, do they?’ Dave called, over the sound of rushing air and roaring engine.
‘Yeah, well, he’s not a local,’ Nick said, defensively. ‘Probably just some blow-in, staying off the main roads so he doesn’t get pulled over.
But it was too late. Our country idyll was exposed for the sham it was. There was no time, now, to prove to Dave and Jude that you could actually get a decent coffee in the town, or to take them accidentally-on-purpose past the stylish gallery, where I hoped I might eventually sell my work. It was too late, anyway, after the run-in with Crazy Van Man and last night’s collection of oddball neighbours to convince myself, let alone my sophisticated urban friends, that this was any place to live. You only had to look at the two station platforms, the up line and the down, to see that anyone with any taste or savoir-faire was heading back up to the smoke, whilst the down was populated by what Ethan would scathingly term ‘randoms’.
The train was pulling in. Jude enveloped me in a perfumed hug.
‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘it was a blast. Great place, kiddo. Just, you know… give it time.’
She gently peeled my knuckles off the collar of her denim jacket and picked up her case. Nick and Dave did some manly back-slapping and then our visitors were on the train, moving down the carriage, mingling with the other passengers so that they could no longer be distinguished one from another, only from those left behind.
5
‘The clay will find you out,’ my ceramics tutor used to tell me and it was true. In my beautiful new studio, the clay found me wanting. It wasn’t its consistency: Nick had taken my plea to heart and found me an old fridge, which, unplugged, made the perfect storage facility. It wasn’t any of the practicalities: I had ironed out all the little teething troubles that had arisen from his misapprehensions about my practice. The awkward configuration of tool store, worktable and wheel had been corrected and I had rescued an old piece of formica from a skip which made an ideal glazing surface. The kiln was up and running.
It was, if anything, too perfect. I didn’t feel equal to it. I’d got used to working in the utilitarian strip-lit basement of Trenchard Street, where anyone over five feet seven had to stoop. Needless to say, at six feet one, Nick had not visited often. It had always been ‘the basement’ never ‘the studio’. The wheel, worktable, kiln and shelving had been squeezed in alongside extraneous junk. By the end, despite Nick’s repeated promises to help me sort it, a proliferation of finished pots were jostling for space with garden chairs, bags of jumble and Ethan’s outgrown toys. It had suited me – the informality of it, the sense that my work was provisional – only one step-up from Play-Doh. Underground, unseen, I had somehow felt freer to explore unseemly things, primeval things. That’s how teddy bears and gingerbread men came to wield axes on my pots; how rag dolls went topless in badly applied lipstick; how hearts and bootees, tampons and butterflies, condoms and cupcakes became ubiquitous tropes. Almost by accident, I had developed a style. Not that I’d known it, until, thanks to Jude, I was offered a show in a posh West End gallery, written up in their catalogue as a feminist ceramicist. They mean lady potter, I’d said, and we’d laughed.
Here, though, was a fresh start. If I couldn’t rediscover my muse up here among the treetops, with the clouds scudding and the birds singing, and the zinc gleaming and the kiln humming, where could I? This place was light and open, an eyrie, from which, eagle-like, I should be able to soar.
I tried to sneak up on it, to let habit take over – feel the weight of the wet clay between my palms, the sense of possibility. I got the treadle going, centred the clay, mind in neutral. I dunked my hands in water, braced my elbows on my knees, pushed down with my thumb, not too hard, just hard enough, to let the pot flare, rise, grow. It was a living thing, the clay on the wheel; close in too fast, squeeze too hard, show it anything but tenderness and it would fly away. I came near a few times; felt it live, held my breath… lost it. I made a couple of pots that morning. Serviceable vessels, both of them; many a potter would have finished them, glazed them, fired them. Not me – I didn’t want these lame, damaged specimens that would sit on a shelf unable to sing.
Into the bin went the latest abortion, and I stood at the window, staring out at the garden, wondering if my best work was behind me, or if I had just believed the hype.
Stir crazy, I headed back to the cottage, knuckles rimed with clay. I would make us a coffee, I thought – talk things over with my husband, take him into my confidence. Befriend him. Take your time, he would tell me. There’s no pressure. You’ve been through a lot.
Slipping through the gap in the hedge, I caught sight of him through the living-room window. He was pacing back and forth with the phone clamped to his ear. Something about his demeanour – the tight lips, the furtive expression – gave me pause. He was probably just buying time, I told myself; negotiating an extension on that Fitzrovia job. He certainly seemed to be negotiating. Surely it was work, not…
Panic rose in my chest. I found myself clenching and unclenching my palms; trying to drive back the feelings of doubt, of worthlessness. I turned around on impulse and went down the garden path. Closing the gate behind me, I began heading up the lane towards the woods but soon changed my mind. I did not want to brood alone in the shade, I wanted to strike out into sunshine, put myself in the way of human contact; reassure myself that life was good and people generally well-meaning. I wanted to make a friend. Turning back, I strode briskly past the Gaineses’ house, and slunk undetected beside the overgrown hedge of Prospect Cottage, telling myself I would look in on Jean another day when I was feeling more robust. For now I needed harmless chatter, tittle tattle, laughter.
My pace slowed again as I drew level with Min and Ray’s B&B, with its cheerful hand-painted sign. People who ran B&Bs must be sociable types, mustn’t they? And Min seemed like she might be friendship material. I had seen her the previous week, getting out of her car with a yoga mat under her arm. We had waved at each other. But today the gravel driveway in front of Min and Ray’s had two strange cars on it and the sign
said ‘NO VACANCIES’. The whirr of a strimmer could be heard in the back garden. Now did not seem like the time.
That left Cath, whose house, whilst much less forbidding than the Gaineses’, was set back above the lane, its front door accessible only via steep stone steps, the very effort of climbing which would undermine any claim I might make to have been ‘just passing’. A shame because Cath seemed perhaps the likeliest candidate for friendship among the locals I had so far met.
I walked on past the ruined barn to the edge of the hamlet, where I turned right at the fork in the road, picked my way over the cattle grid and headed up the hill.
It was steeper than it looked, and I had to stop halfway and hold on to my thighs. Down at the bottom, a car door slammed and a dog-walker shouted, ‘Bailey! Come to heel!’
I turned, curious. Perhaps Nick and I should get a dog, I thought, though the beasts I used to see in the park in London frightened me to death, with their barrel bodies and their bared teeth. This dog seemed a different proposition – a setter or something. I could just see its tail, waving like a pennant, between the cattle trough and a clump of nettles.
I moved off again, pushing hard into the balls of my feet as the sandy path climbed higher and then petered out. Now my sandals slithered on flattened grass, making my climb even more difficult. I glanced up. The summit was still a good distance away. The house would be visible now, if I looked, but I had already decided that the sight of it should be my reward for reaching the top. A breathless scramble past a couple of scrubby bushes and I was there. My chest heaved and my lungs burned but I felt exhilarated; even more so when I turned round to take in the view.
I gazed first into the far distance, where beyond the town, the estuary glinted through a cleft in the hills like a shucked snakeskin. The sky was overcast, except where three broad beams of sunlight burst over the valley, turning it an improbable emerald green. Hedgerows divided the fields into geometric shapes I couldn’t name and tangles of woodland camouflaged the lichen-coloured farms and houses, the only signs of modernity an occasional solar panel or the swish of a car along the road into town. It was as lovely as a picture on a calendar and just as unreal. Slowly, I allowed my gaze to track back down the lee of the valley, past the manor house, the stand of trees, the sagging roof of the barn and at last to what I must call, for want of a better word, home. I was standing now where the hiker whom I’d suspected of spying on us had stood and I was relieved to see that from this distance you couldn’t really make out in any detail what was going on in the house – only whether lights were on or off (they were off), whether smoke curled from the chimney (it didn’t), whether there was anyone moving about in the rearward facing rooms. There was.
Nick was in the bedroom; the vague flicker of movement somehow still identifiable as my husband. And then a second flicker which I couldn’t account for, unless… no, surely not? I shaded my eyes with my hand and squinted. It must be a trick of the light. But no, two silhouettes stood side by side, their heads seeming to touch, like figures in stained glass. Blood rushed in my ears. I felt sick. Not this. Not again. I slumped down on the grass. Could it be her? Surely not. He had promised me that was done with. He had promised. Someone else, then? Another one. Some floozy from the local pub; a neighbour, maybe? Perhaps he was addicted. Perhaps I was. Yes, that was it. I was making this happen. It was my fault.
I heard a faint keening, like the rise and fall of a car alarm several streets away, and it took me a moment to understand that I was making the noise myself. Climbing unsteadily to my feet, I focused again on the blankness of the bedroom window, of my bedroom window. There was no one there now. They were gone, or perhaps just out of sight. The glass looked as dark and impenetrable as a lake, from which something ugly might or might not briefly have surfaced.
I felt wetness on my knuckle and recoiled in surprise as the woman’s red setter bounded joyfully around my knees.
‘Get down, Bailey!’ the young woman called, panting up to me and grabbing the dog’s collar.
‘It’s all right, he won’t hurt you, he’s soft as anything,’ she gasped. ‘Just not very well trained. He’s my sister’s dog.’
They said people looked like their dogs, but this woman looked like her sister’s dog, which seemed an odd coincidence. She was tall and rangy, with thick auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing the inevitable Barbour jacket, but she wasn’t a country type, I could tell. No one round here wore make-up to walk a dog.
‘Oh no, yeah, I’m not scared, it’s OK,’ I said, willing myself to keep looking at the woman and not to glance back at the house.
‘Oh good,’ said the woman doubtfully.
‘It’s steeper than it looks, that’s all,’ I said, putting a hand to my chest.
‘Tell me about it,’ said the woman. She waffled on about preferring the gym to the great outdoors and how poorly trained the dog was and whether or not in the countryside you could get away with not scooping the poop. I was in the fish tank again, watching her mouth moving, but hearing only whale song. The woman cocked her head curiously, but having no idea what she had just said, I muttered something vague and turned away. The next time I looked, she was heading back down the hill, holding the dog on a short leash. I glanced at the house and felt something like grief rising in my chest.
I waited, in a state of agitation, until she had got far enough ahead that there could be no risk of my catching up with her, and then I began my own descent, galumphing down the hill sideways, knees trembling, breathing ragged, my eyes aching with pent-up tears. I jumped the last foot from the bank onto the lane, and turned my ankle as I landed. It was as much as I could do to limp my way across the cattle grid without crying. I was hobbling homeward as fast as I was able, when the dog woman’s Fiesta came by. Shrinking into the hedgerow to let it pass, I caught my T-shirt on a bramble and had to wrench myself free. Droplets of blood bloomed on my arm and trickled down, blending with the clay dust to turn my wrist pink. I rubbed it to a lurid smear, then hurried on, trying to adopt a jogger’s pace so as not to look like what I was – a deranged harpy running home to catch my husband in an act of infidelity.
‘Oops-a-daisy!’
A firm hand gripped me by the shoulder and I stopped short, panting and staring wildly into a face so huge and ruddy and friendly, with its abundance of chins and laughter lines that, if it weren’t for a whiff of Lily of the Valley and an absence of facial hair, I might have taken Cath for Santa Claus.
‘Oh God! Sorry, I’m so sorry.’
She had a recycling box perched on one ample hip, most of its contents now slewed into the gutter.
‘Not to worry,’ said Cath. ‘Do me good to get down there. You were going some, though, what’s the hurry? And did you know you’re bleeding?’ She swivelled my forearm to show me. ‘Why don’t you come in and we’ll put a…’
‘I can’t!’ I said, a little wildly. ‘It’s very kind of you…’ I tried to moderate my tone, and attempt a normal person’s smile, ‘… and I really would love to come and have a chat another time, but I’ve got… I’m… expecting a delivery!’
‘Oh, OK,’ said Cath with a doubtful smile. She bent down effortfully to pluck an empty whiskey bottle out of the gutter. ‘Be sure your sins will find you out,’ she said, waving it aloft, but I was already speeding away.
It was the last push now, past the B&B, past Jean and Gordon’s, up the killer slope, muscles like water, heart hammering, and at last I could see the cottage. I stopped dead. The Range Rover had gone from its parking place. I felt sick. Bile actually came into my mouth. This was it, then. The worst. I looked across the fields to the main road. They could only have left minutes ago. Christ, he must have nerves of steel. How long had I been out? I’d lost track. If only Cath hadn’t wittered on so… They’d be nearing the town by now. It was only ten minutes the way Nick drove. I could see them in my mind’s eye – staring straight ahead, smelling of perfume and sex. A discreet goodbye at the station, a scree
ching U-turn and Nick would be on his way back, a packet of fags or a newspaper tossed onto the passenger seat for an alibi. I’d have to be quick…
I ran up the garden path, high on adrenaline. The door was unlocked. I scanned the living room wildly. The TV was tuned to Sky News and muted. An empty coffee cup sat on the arm of the sofa. I sniffed the air like a wild animal but the pleasantly smoky scent of the wood burner was all I could discern. I took the stairs two at a time. The bedclothes were tumbled. Yanking back the duvet, I scanned the bottom sheet for stains, but that proved nothing. They probably did it standing up. They were probably doing it when I saw them from the top of the hill. My stomach clenched at the thought. I hurried to the bathroom and flipped open the pedal bin, but found only my own panty-liner, cringing around its smear of discharge. I felt a pang of self-disgust. No wonder Nick went elsewhere. I let the lid clang shut and returned to the landing, glancing this way and that, at a loss what to do next. I stood like a sentinel at the front window, clutching my elbows to stop myself from trembling. I could see the road in the distance, stitched in and out of the undulating landscape. I squinted hard but the passing cars were too far away to identify their colours, still less their makes. Any one of them could be Nick’s. Soon enough I would hear his wheels crunch on the gravel, the expensive clunk of the driver’s door. I could not afford to be like this when that happened. I would go back to the studio, I decided; play dumb. Yes, that was it. I’d keep the upper hand. Stay in control.
I went downstairs, through the kitchen, out through the unlocked door. I could do this. Past the pond and the vegetable patch. I could do it. Through the gap in the yew hedge, across the grass, up the steps.
I closed the door behind me, inhaled the warm, wood-scented air. I pressed my palms on the cool zinc of the work surface and took a few deep breaths.
An angry buzzing noise made me jump. I cast around in a panic, failing at first to recognize the vibration of my mobile phone, which I had switched to silent and slid into the pan of the old kitchen scales I used to weigh out my clay. I snatched it up, just as the buzzing stopped. Nick. Nine missed calls.
The Move Page 4
