Before the Ruins

by Victoria Gosling

  So I kept bringing us back to it, asking Marcus and Peter and Em again and again what they would want to do if they had one more day, just one more day.

  * * *

  On June 20, dawn broke the color of Mrs. East’s roses. After much consideration, I’d decided not to kill my mother. Instead, I made myself pancakes for breakfast. I put all the golden syrup I wanted on them, which turned out to be all the golden syrup there was. Then I licked the plate.

  The lane into town was narrow and windy. When cars came along, I waited on the verge and then wandered out again to the middle of the road where it was sunny. The woods exhaled cool air. At some point I started jogging, and then the jog became a sprint, just for the hell of it, in and out of the sunlight and the dappled shadows on the road, until I was winded, and slowed, panting, to a lope.

  A tractor was haymaking in a field. I passed the rugby club, and then the corner of the common where the circus tents of the Mop would set up every autumn, and where certain girls would sit near on the grass banks in summer, waiting for cars to pull up and take them out to some quiet spot in the Savernake and—almost always—bring them back.

  When I got to Marlborough I went to the bank, and since it was the last day on earth, I took out every penny I had, which added up to nineteen pounds and seventy-eight pence.

  * * *

  The manor lay empty, with a chain and padlock on the gate and signs that said the property was patrolled by guard dogs. It wasn’t. Men working for Marcus’s uncle Darren had put the signs up a few years back, when the family who owned it got into trouble with inheritance taxes and had put it on the market. It had sold, a year or so ago, but there was still no sign of the new owners. A couple of times squatters had gotten in, but Marcus’s uncle had ways of dealing with unwanted visitors, involving his Alsatians, Arnie and Sly; balaclavas; and a couple of his bricklayer friends. Last time, he let them leave with what they could carry, burnt the rest of their stuff, and gave Marcus the thumb-sized piece of hash he’d taken from them.

  As we came down the hill along the A436, from the van’s passenger seat I could see the manor’s shingle roof and then, for a split second, I was allowed a glimpse of its lovely face before it was swallowed by the line of firs that stood along the front boundary, shielding it from the road. On the double-decker to Swindon, from the top deck, you could keep it in view for a few more seconds, and on school trips, or the annual Christmas excursion to see a show at the theater, I had always looked out for it, greeted it as a secret friend, like the mysterious, bowing blue-robed figure in the east window of the church.

  Marcus parked the van in front of the gate and we climbed over quickly and moved up the driveway, out of sight of the road. There were weeds growing up through the gravel and the lawn was knee-high in wild barley and thistles. As we drew nearer and the sound of the cars—already muted by the firs—diminished, I became aware of the murmur of bees in the grass. I suppose there were crickets and hornets and wasps as well, but what I remember was that heavy, satisfied sound that bees make. The brick had weathered to a darkish pink, and each one was surrounded by a rime of white mortar. With the morning sun upon it, it made my heart quicken.

  We stopped a few feet away from the front door and dropped our bags on the stone steps. Peter peered in the windows and as I bent over to untie my laces, I heard him bang the knocker against the door, and the sound echoed through the empty building. Marcus was standing with his hands in his pockets, gazing upward.

  The manor was three stories high. On either side, set back a little, and a story shorter, were wings. The roof was shingle, the facade brick, and around the mullioned windows, the builders had incorporated seams of local flint. Further on, if you followed the drive round, were stables and a clutch of outbuildings.

  “Are you going to take that side?”

  With his chin, Marcus indicated left. That way, the climb was fairly easy owing to a chimneypiece edged in sticking-out brickwork, and nearer the top, a string course, a line of bricks that stuck out edge-ward from the wall.

  No other route was immediately obvious, but I knew that Marcus had found one, and that it was hard, which was why he was nudging me toward the easier climb. Every way I looked, the eaves were the problem. Then I caught Marcus cast a quick look right and, following his gaze, I saw in the shaded corner where the wing met the main house, there was a tree. Tiny green-and-brown dappled pears hung from its branches and, while it barely reached to the first-floor windows, coming halfway down the wall was a piece of drainpipe, and above that a series of jutting cornerstones.

  I went to stand beneath it with Marcus at my heels.

  “I’ll take the tree and the pipe. You take the chimney,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “The world ends today.”

  “Right.” I wasn’t going to be told what I could and could not climb and Marcus was smart enough to know it. Besides, it was one of the things he liked about me. His mum, Darren’s sister, was a bag of nerves, forever calling up Marcus or Darren and asking them to drop whatever they were doing because she thought she smelled gas or the fridge was making a funny noise.

  “I’ll watch you.”

  “Peter can do it. I’ll meet you at the top.”

  He looked at the route up and poked the toe of his trainers into the ground. The lawn at the base of the tree was soft and springy, but even so.

  “You fall, Andy, you’re fucked.”

  “Think so?” Our smiles met. Peter, hearing his name, ambled over, a finger thrust between the pages of a book to guard his place.

  “There’s a piano inside.”

  Em was sitting on the lawn and had taken out her sketchbook. She lifted her skirt so the sun could get to her legs, her gaze settled upon the fountain and its stone cherubs, and she sighed contentedly.

  I stepped into Marcus’s cupped hands, swung up into the pear tree, and a couple of birds shot skyward. Following the trunk, I hauled myself up and then, as I got higher, shifted my weight so that the tree bent over toward the wall of the house. As it did so, I pushed off with my feet and caught hold of the drainpipe. It was easy and within a few seconds, I had shinnied up and got my hands around the first of the cornerstones. There was a breeze higher up. A little winged creature, a beetle with petrol-blue iridescent wings, landed on my forearm. I got my feet right up under me and grasped for the next cornerstone and then the next, feeling the oil from my palms seeping into the stone.

  The guttering was choked with rotting leaves and bright green moss. I reached up and put my hands on the roof. The shingles seemed firm, but they were old and I wondered when was the last time a human hand had touched them. It seemed likely that they would take my weight, but I wouldn’t know until it was too late. There were no handholds on the tiles, so the thing was just to get the feet up and run, keeping low and hunched forward. I got the first chimneystack in my sights, drove up with my legs, and went for it.

  By the time I got my hands to the stack, I was panting. The chimney pots were covered in bird shit and I held on tight to them, managing a single whoop as I caught my breath. Marcus was coming up over the other side. From the other chimney he walked the length of the roof to me as though along a tightrope, his arms held out for balance. I swiveled round to get my first look over the back of the manor.

  I would get to know it all well: the courtyard with the remains of a once-fine rose garden; the walled kitchen garden where a few fig trees, spliced against the crumbling walls, dropped their fruit onto stone pathways where it split and rotted; the derelict greenhouses full of empty snail shells, spiders, and broken glass. My gaze passed over the tangled orchard of apple trees and the remains of a rotting summerhouse. Further away, bordering the property at the back, was a copse and then the pale yellow of barley fields which rose to the horizon. Then I glimpsed the glint of sun on water and saw, to the left, at the bottom of the sloping lawn, a small lake, half choked with reeds, and there on its far side, a folly, a little white-pillared repli
ca of a Greek temple.

  Marcus kissed me, a quick, juddery kiss as we held on to the chimneys. Down below, a wood pigeon flew to a perch atop the pear tree and when I looked up toward the sun, the sky was clear as glass, and specked with tiny flying insects. The shingles were like scales under my feet, like the scales of a great dragon. The shimmery feeling was back, and I did not think I could contain it. It tempted me to flinch, as though the joy of it would break my heart. For a second I thought Marcus was going to say something and I turned to look at him, at his gleaming face, wet with sweat from the climb, and ever so briefly he appeared to me like a stranger. But before he spoke, if he even intended to, I saw the white flash of Peter’s waving hand and looked down to see, standing next to Peter, a real stranger looking up at us, face shadowed by the hand that was shielding his eyes from the sun.

  CHAPTER 3

  WEDDING

  Just before he disappeared, I invited Peter to a wedding. He came, but arrived so late I’d given up on him coming at all. Dinner lay in ruins, the father of the bride was inching toward the summit of his speech, when suddenly I caught sight of him, slipping around the edge of the room toward me. The wedding was at the Savoy, in the Lancaster Ballroom, and the room was a sea of pink roses, of gleaming points of light flickering from candle to crystal to chandelier. Waiting staff dipped among the tables, and the mirrored walls made it seem like there were more of them than there were, more of everything. For a moment I lost sight of Peter, then he was there, right beside me, the same dark hair and widow’s peak, the aquiline nose and bone-white skin.

  He gave me a quick squeeze of the shoulder by way of apology, and then gestured to a waiter to fill his glass. The others at the table, strangers all, appraised him: so tall and slender, so well dressed, the keen and handsome face, and then … Ah! They’d seen it, what people have always been able to see in Peter, even children who don’t know the name for it yet, even when we were tiny, long before Peter himself knew what it was.

  “Three?”

  “Oh, four at least.” But before we could agree on how many hundreds of thousands of pounds the wedding had cost, it was time to raise our glasses to the bride and groom. I felt Peter take in my dress and then glance at my face, so that I tipped my head forward into the light to give him a better look. His fingers quickly reached out and touched the back of my hand, and then just as quickly retreated. He smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “How long has it been this time?”

  “About six months,” I said.

  The last time I saw Peter, I’d gone to meet him and some friends of his—or at least people he knew—in a bar on my way from somewhere else. Peter had bought round after round of drinks and had his arm slung around the shoulders of a young Norwegian who looked at him with hopeful bright blue eyes.

  Later that night, toasts finally over, I asked him about Anders as we strolled through the Embankment Gardens.

  “Torn apart by wolves in Regent’s Park. A very sad business.”

  “And the one before, wasn’t he…?”

  “Made into black pudding by a German cannibal? Yes. I had to testify at the trial. Shocking.” I suspected he left them, most of the time. Or perhaps they tired of being kept at arm’s length. “Nothing to report on that front, I’m afraid. Are you seeing anyone?”

  I shook my head. The Thames was a sheet of rippling darkness. By the wall, Peter turned to me.

  “Whoever are these people?”

  “I only know the groom, Oliver. He’s my boss. You know the type, but we get on. I think her dad owns British Airways. Or Bahrain Airways. Something like that. It’s his second go. Her first.” I paused. “I wasn’t going to come, but then I thought it might be fun. If you came too. Isn’t this where they arrested Oscar?”

  Wilde, patron saint of queer and clever boys, was once Peter’s darling. I remember notes passed in the classroom: Oscar said this, Oscar said that, as though Wilde was climbing up the ivy and in through the vicarage back bedroom window each evening. We would have been about twelve. Em was already our friend by then, Marcus still a few years off.

  Peter did not reply. I was struggling to judge his mood. The air was cold, and I gripped his arm. Even in heels I barely reached his chin.

  “Silly shoes.” I pointed at my toes.

  “Pretty.”

  “Christian.”

  “You naughty thing.” But he didn’t want my hag routine. Instead he ran a hand through his hair and sighed and I was possessed by a memory of Peter turning to me at our infant school thirty years earlier and whispering, “Your Ws are like wobbly bottoms, Andy. Like bums. Fat wobbly bums. Mine are much better. See.”

  I scavenged a cigarette from a young man with glistening eyes standing among a group of smokers by the River Doors. A pale bridesmaid in light blue chiffon hung from his arm as he cupped his hands to offer me a light. I walked back to offer it to Peter.

  “Shares?”

  “Of course.”

  We took another turn of the gardens. The young man was watching us. I handed Peter the fag. He inhaled and then made a face. “I think we should get very drunk together.”

  “Really, Peter?”

  “Oh absolutely. Don’t you think so?” There was a note in his voice. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was need. And I suppose I heard in it another kind of offer, one I wanted to grab with both hands: Get wasted with me, get happy with me, like old times … So I replied quickly that of course I thought we should. Even though I’d already had more than enough, even though there are compelling reasons why I shouldn’t drink at all.

  * * *

  When he was a child, Peter’s parents told him there was an angel writing down everything he did in a book. There were two columns, one for the good things and one for the bad things. When I first knew him, when I was the rough kid with a kitchen-scissors haircut, hunched over my free school dinner, knife and fork clutched in my fists, there was a sort of physical stutter to Peter, like he couldn’t ever trust an instinct, not even to get out of the way of a ball hurled at his face, without checking in first with his angel. I don’t know if that was what marked him out. I would have been the more obvious target—no dad, jumble-sale clothes, mum off her hinges—but then my teeth and claws were sharper.

  Back inside we fetched drinks and went to stand in a corner with a good view of the crowd. I watched Peter as his eyes moved over the guests and wondered if the angel was still there, invisibly keeping track of accounts. I showed Peter the keycard to my room.

  “Why not a taxi?”

  “Treating myself.” I had also thought that if the evening went well, Peter might stay too. I had imagined us lying on the bed in hotel robes watching clips from YouTube on the flat screen. On the website it said that a chef was available around the clock and that special requests were catered for, and I’d coveted the idea of us lying there giggling and ordering up strange creations from room service.

  “Work must be going well.”

  I shrugged. “Yours?”

  Peter nodded and then looked away. I was not quite sure what Peter did. His degree had been in law. Now, his job was something to do with navigating the intricacies of international tax legalities for a series of companies I’d never heard of. It involved a lot of travel, and he was paid a lot of money, that was all I knew. My own job, compliance officer for an investment fund, drew similar reactions. People asked. I told them. After a few seconds their eyes glazed over, and the next time we met, they would ask again. Of course, after he went missing, I regretted not pressing him, accepting the averted gaze as a sign of boredom rather than evasion.

  Peter fetched more drinks.

  “Shots, Peter?”

  “Shots and champagne.”

  “Well that’s all right then.” I thought again of the room upstairs, the gorgeous, very expensive room only a few doors down from where Wilde and Bosie had enjoyed their trysts. My nightie was laid out on top of the covers. Next to the bed, there was a glass of water. In the
bathroom, I had lined up the comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, makeup remover, eye makeup remover, cleanser, toner, moisturizer, eye cream, and hand cream. Small tasks performed for the benefit of my future self. It was a law I had come to live by: Thou Shalt Not Lay Mines for Thy Future Self! Thou Shalt Not Create Great Piles of Shit for Her to Shovel! But then sometimes it left me feeling like a butler to a cold and demanding stranger: the pension contributions, the long hours at work, the time put in at the gym, the eternal vigilance. Because what about me? What about the me now?

  “You’ll make sure everything ends well?”

  “Didn’t I always look after you?” Peter said.

  I wanted to answer that it had been the other way around. Instead I said cheers because I couldn’t think of a better toast—absent friends was out of the question—and Peter said cheers too, and we drank the shots, and then the champagne, and then we drank lots more.

  * * *

  But I do remember. Most of it. We circulated and looked at all the money. Was that so-and-so? Hadn’t that old lady once dated Mick Jagger? In the Manhattan Room we discovered that it didn’t matter how much money was spent on a wedding, the music could still be wrong. After a couple more drinks, we danced anyway and I thought how the dress I was wearing had been worth all the money and the swimming disgust paying for it had made me feel.

  In the atrium, we watched a wicked-looking old gent try his luck with a pair of fifty-somethings. They were far enough away that we couldn’t hear them, so I voiced the old chap and Peter the ladies.

  “You’re both as lithe as eels.”

  “Octavia and I have very strict rules when it comes to three-ways.”

  I remember needing to pee but not wanting to go because Peter’s eyes were suddenly gentle and unguarded, and then really having to pee, dashing to the ladies’, whacking on some lipstick, and then quick to get more drinks, because I didn’t want to lose it, that lovely cloak of gaiety and wildness and freedom, with its concealed lining of panic.