It wasn’t going to happen, he wasn’t going to ask me—but he did. As the evening progressed, we got chatting in earnest. Eventually, he asked me if I’d like to meet up for lunch some time. That was how it started.
Maybe I loved him slightly too much. I could get a bit obsessive about the things that really mattered to me, sometimes.
But that didn’t matter now. Sitting at the back of the bus, things flashed hard and fast behind my eyes—a house I couldn’t really remember, a village I didn’t know at all—the entire course of my life so far trembling on the brink of the unknown.
We had a takeaway that night. The stripped, impersonal look of the kitchen seemed to demand it. We ate pizza out of grease-speckled cardboard boxes and drank beer straight from the can, in a living room that seemed bigger and chillier than usual; all its personal touches had been carefully packed away, leaving nothing but the sofa we sat on and the widescreen TV that flickered unwatched in the corner.
‘This is so weird,’ I said. ‘I feel like a bloody squatter.’
Carl laughed. ‘Is that good or bad?’
‘I don’t know. It just seems…’ But I couldn’t quite define the taste of incipient upheaval, even to myself, and I laughed as he did, cuddling up to him. ‘Want some garlic bread?’
We ate for a while in companionable near-silence. Beside me, he looked carefree and five years younger, a clean-cut student relaxing after a hard day’s lectures—his responsible, slightly earnest work-face was nowhere in evidence. It was the way he looked on holiday sometimes, in a hotel room, on a beach; as if day-to-day concerns had been packed away like the furniture, temporarily but completely out of sight.
‘You’re really looking forward to moving, aren’t you?’ I asked quietly.
‘Of course.’ Looking at me, he frowned slightly. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I think so.’ But, while it was true, it still seemed to require further clarification. ‘I’m going to miss things here, though. Work. Friends. The town centre. This flat, even…’
‘Don’t forget the traffic. And the crime.’ His broad face creased into a grin. ‘And that wonderful kebab shop over the road. You’re going to lie awake at night dreaming we could have that place back.’
I couldn’t help smiling myself—the kebab shop was the kind of domestic annoyance that could quickly develop into a mordant private joke, and it had done. ‘It’s not going to be the same without the three a.m. drunks every weekend,’ I agreed. ‘There’s nothing like waking up to the sound of top-volume swearing.’
‘The Saturday night fights.’
‘Pavement sick on a Sunday morning.’
‘The joys of city life.’ Finishing his last slice of pizza, he put his arm round me, reassuring, expansive. ‘It’s going to be great in the country, Annie. Peace and quiet. A gorgeous house. More money.’
‘I’ll be a kept woman.’ I was only half-joking. ‘It’s great you’ve been offered this promotion, but—I don’t know—it’s going to feel funny, not working. I don’t think I was cut out to be a housewife.’
‘Who says you have to be? You can get a job in the area if you start feeling too bored. Or you can start writing again. Get going on that second novel.’
‘I’ll have to be inspired first.’ My thoughts turned back to that well-designed, well-meant leaving card, on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. ‘I hope I get another idea soon,’ I said. ‘I really miss writing, you know.’
‘I do know. But I’m sure you will.’ I saw him do a small double-take and check his watch, becoming momentarily serious again, the Regional Sales Manager that he’d be in our new life. ‘Oh, yeah, I’d better call Mum and Dad. Remind them we’re off first thing tomorrow.’
‘Give them my love.’
‘Will do. Won’t be long.’
He got up, went out towards the hallway phone. I found myself listening carefully. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’d always been interested in other people’s families and how they differed from each other. Carl’s couldn’t have been further removed from Petra’s, who seemed to see each other as everything from loan companies to lodgers to confidantes as the situation arose. Carl, his younger brother and his parents never seemed to call each other just to chat, but would never have dreamed of ignoring a formal milestone—in this case, our last evening in Reading. Hearing Carl talk to them, I was always obscurely reminded of a Japanese tea ceremony; created and driven by protocol, charming, amiable, but essentially formal.
‘All right, Dad,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll look forward to it. Thanks a lot, I’m sure we will. Give our love to Nick when you see him. Bye.’
I heard him hanging up, his footsteps in the hallway. He came back into the living room and sat down, looking cheerful. ‘Well, that’s that done,’ he said. ‘Dad says they’re going to send us a little moving-in present—probably a set of saucepans, knowing Mum. I spoke to her as well. She sends her love.’
I couldn’t help asking, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. ‘What did she say?’
‘Oh, just the usual. She hopes you don’t get lonely there, you can always give her a ring if you do.’ Seeing my expression, he came up behind me and closed his arms round my shoulders. ‘Come on, Annie, it’s nothing to get upset about. You know she means well.’
‘I know, I know. I’m just being silly.’ I hurried to change the subject. ‘What time did you say the removal van was turning up tomorrow?’
‘Half seven—I rang to double-check with them this afternoon. Better get an early night.’ The comforting pressure of his hands on my forearms became something else, moving downwards, inwards, gradually melting from practical into sensual. ‘It’s our last night here, after all. It would be a shame not to celebrate.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ I turned slightly, he bent down, we kissed. A giddy, weightless holiday feeling came out of nowhere to become an intense aphrodisiac, as if our drive tomorrow would end in some airport concourse; sitting in a café that faced out onto walkways and perfume shops, drinking coffee, waiting for our flight, and preparing ourselves for a whole new world.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I SPY, WITH MY LITTLE EYE…’
We’d been driving for quite a while, in the separate-isolation-booths silence that tended to fall unexpectedly during long journeys and set amazingly fast. Carl’s ironic voice took me by surprise.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘It’s something beginning with M.’
He grinned. ‘How did you guess?’
‘There’s nothing to see but motorway. Doesn’t seem as if there has been for hours.’ Beyond the car windows, it extended stark and two-dimensional as an old computer game—black tarmac, blue sky, featureless green stretching out on both sides as far as the eye could see. ‘How much longer?’
‘Next to no time, now. The removal guys are probably there already.’
Silence fell again, the beginnings of a bad headache buzzing in my mind—another key symptom I associated with too-long, too-featureless drives. But yesterday’s uncertainty had vanished without a trace. Now it was blown effortlessly away by spring breezes and sunlight—so clear, so pale, so fresh—like a nightmare that had faded beyond recognition three seconds after you opened your eyes.
We turned off the motorway onto a medium-sized road, then almost instantly onto a narrower one.
‘Well,’ said Carl, ‘here we go.’
It was extraordinary, how quickly our scenery had changed. Through the windows, the relentless brutal ugliness of our surroundings was gone without a trace. I saw fields like brown corduroy, hay stacked in neat bales; the May afternoon suddenly becoming beautiful as it touched on old honey-coloured farmhouses, a grey-dappled pony grazing idly in a field.
‘You know,’ I said quietly, ‘I’d forgotten how lovely it was.’
‘Like something from a postcard, isn’t it?’ He laughed—unexpected elation affected us in different ways, making me dreamy and thoughtful, filling him with a vast, undiscriminating good h
umour. ‘Almost makes me want to pack in Taylor’s Furniture and start my own farm. Can just see myself milking the cows every morning.’
Down another narrow side road, trees closed in around and above us. Entering the shadowy canopy of dark-green leaves was like diving into an outdoor pool in summer; the chill through the open windows was immediate and welcome. A sign came into view to the left. ABBOTS NEWTON.
‘I’ll get a state-of-the-art company tractor,’ Carl was saying. ‘You’ll just love feeding the chickens and making the jam.’
‘It might just grow on me.’ He was joking, but everything around us sold the picture-postcard idyll in earnest; pretty little cottages, lush greenery, an infinitely seductive advert for placid, constructive, semi-rural pursuits.
‘I might take up gardening here, you know. No, really. I think I might like it.’ Carl turned right, and we entered the village equivalent of a town centre. I saw only three cars, and they were all parked outside a Tudor-looking building I’d have bet on being the real thing. The sign swinging over the door in the breeze read THE BULL INN, three stars. Across the road from it, the smallest shop I’d ever seen announced its identity as ABBOTS NEWTON STORES.
‘For your sake,’ Carl said, ‘I really hope that place sells fags.’
‘If not, I’ll just have to stock up in bulk. Come to think of it, I’m dying for one now…where the hell did I put them?’
But we were almost there, no point in lighting up now. I vaguely recalled our surroundings from our brief house-inspecting trip in March, and recognised the handful of other houses we passed before turning into a driveway.
Our driveway, I had to remind myself, it’s ours, now. I found it impossible to fully take in. What had probably been built as a single house in the late nineteenth century was now knocked into two, and a waist-high privet hedge bisected the front garden. The façade of the house was blinding white, the tiled roof the colour of bitter chocolate, and surrounding trees and bushes were dark or light green depending on where shadow fell. I had an impression of colours squeezed fresh out of the tube, laid thick and unblended on canvas, the world coloured in with the unrealistic precision of a diligent ten-year-old.
‘I can’t believe I never noticed how gorgeous it was,’ I murmured.
‘I know what you mean.’ For a second or two, I saw him drinking in the scene as I did before becoming practical—his gaze moved to the removal van already there, the two men carrying our Reading coffee table through the open front door. Everything in his demeanour changed from reflective to businesslike. ‘Suppose I’d better go and give them a hand,’ he said, then, with a quick backward smile, ‘welcome home, Annie.’
I couldn’t share his no-rest-for-the-wicked urgency, not today. A dreamlike feeling had settled over me, and I moved as if in slow motion. He’d entered the house before I unbuckled my seatbelt, got out, leant against the passenger door. I inhaled the scent of this place as if I could somehow make it part of me, discovering something I’d never expected to find here: a bone-deep hunger to belong.
‘Hello, you must be one of the new neighbours!’
The voice across the hedge startled me, and I glanced round sharply. A woman had come out of the adjacent house, and its front door stood wide open behind her. She could have been anything between forty-five and sixty, plump, pleasant-faced, barely-lined; she wore a short-sleeved shirt, and her forearms were white to the elbows. ‘I’d shake hands,’ she said apologetically as she approached the hedge, ‘but I’d get flour all over you—I’m afraid I’ve been baking. I just saw your car pull up, and thought I’d pop out to say hello.’
‘It’s nice to meet you.’ We smiled at each other, and I noticed more details—the slightly anxious blue eyes, the wisps of mid-brown, probably-dyed hair, escaping from a makeshift bun. ‘I’m Anna Howell. My husband Carl’s off helping the removal men.’
‘I’m Liz. Liz Grey.’ She turned and called towards her open front door, her voice startlingly loud in the near-silence. ‘Helen! Come on out and meet the new people!’
The woman who emerged was easier to put an age to than Liz, around forty-five. She looked even taller than me, about five foot ten. Her colouring struck me as vaguely Nordic, or perhaps just more Anglo-Saxon than most people’s.
‘Helen lives just off the village square,’ Liz explained as the woman came over. ‘She’s helping me get some things ready for a bring-and-buy sale in Wareham tomorrow. Helen, this is Anna.’
‘Hi,’ I said, extending a hand.
‘Hello.’ My hand was shaken rather perfunctorily—Helen’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and something about them said she always took everything absolutely seriously. ‘Welcome to Abbots Newton.’
‘Thanks. It does seem lovely.’
‘It’s a very nice place, dear,’ said Liz. ‘You’ll have to pop round for a proper chat, when you’re all settled in. Come whenever it suits you; if my car’s here, so am I.’ She gestured towards the little powder-blue Fiat in her driveway.
I smiled again, nodded, ‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘I’d love to. Look, I’m sorry to run off, but I’d really better go and give my husband a hand.’
Goodbyes all round, and we headed towards our separate front doors. The shadows through my own were unfamiliar and intriguing, and I could hear Carl and the removal men upstairs. First things first, I thought—I was dying for a cigarette now. Standing just inside the door, I lit up, and felt the reality of this place slotting into place around me.
Our first week in Abbots Newton felt so much like a holiday that—no matter how often I reminded myself that we lived here now—a deep-rooted part of me remained stubbornly convinced that we didn’t. Underlying my thoughts and feelings, there remained an inexplicable conviction that this was a temporary escape from Reading’s events and stresses and concerns; that I’d be walking back to work next Monday morning refreshed and pleasantly regretful, thinking back fondly to the white-painted, oak-beamed house we’d rented for a single idyllic week.
It wasn’t simply the change of scene that made me feel like that—it was everything in the atmosphere, the situation. That week, we seemed to exist in isolation, a couple with no wider network extending around us, romantically and lazily adrift as if the world had become a gondola and we were the only two people in it. There was nothing and nobody else to affect anything we said, thought or did—no managers or colleagues intruding on our private selves with praise or criticism or indifference, no brusque outside world making its own demands in the form of traffic jams and gas bills and late-night drunken fights outside the kebab shop.
I knew that some people would have been bored and enervated by this, people like Petra, people who could easily grow restless with a one-to-one conversation in a deserted pub, who seemed to have a raging desire for strangers’ voices in the background, and nights out in big groups, and casual acquaintances everywhere they looked. I also knew that Carl was happy to live like this for a single week, comfortably aware that normal service would resume next Monday. Personally, however, I’d have been only too delighted to spend the rest of my life in this way—just the two of us together, with nothing to care about but each other, and the straightforward beauty of our surroundings.
Of course, there was inevitably some activity: the man from the phone company arriving to reconnect us, the carpet fitters, the postman lugging the carefully-packaged set of saucepans that had been Carl’s parents’ inevitable moving-in present. But that didn’t seem to count. They were strangers who drifted in and out like ghosts and left no trace of themselves, disappearing to leave us absolutely free to turn any impulse into reality.
The house itself enraptured us, that first week—it was so different from anything we’d known before. Its low ceilings, its narrow curving staircase, its arched doorways Carl would have had to bend to get through if he’d been much taller than his five foot eleven. And its walls, bare and white as fresh sheets of paper, waiting for whatever marks of our personalities we cared to inscribe
.
Long, aimless, laughing walks around the quiet village, car journeys that had no specific destination and no purpose other than the joy of discovery, three-hour lunches in country pubs we’d just happened to pass, endless lovemaking in the bedroom’s afternoon sunlight—the petty, querulous, demanding clock I’d taken for granted in Reading had suddenly fallen silent. We smiled at strangers, saw them smile back at us, and knew nobody.
At any given moment, it seemed that we saw something new—the middle-aged couple walking four Labradors in the village square, the sprawlingly functional farm on the outskirts of neighbouring Wareham, the field in which white ponies grazed like a beautiful hallucination. And constantly, constantly, the sunlight, cool breezes, drifting smells of earth and wildflowers—a sense of the world standing poised and alert, preparing to dive smoothly into summer.
On Thursday Carl went to pick up his new company car. I drove him to Wareham Station in the sporty little white Mazda we’d arrived here in, which would be mine from today.
‘Honestly,’ I said, as we approached the station, ‘I don’t mind driving you all the way into Bournemouth. Really.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Annie. There’s no point us both having to come back from there—I might as well get the train. Anyway, I won’t be long.’ I pulled up outside the little station. ‘Be back about two thirty,’ he said, opening the passenger door. ‘See you then.’
Driving back on my own felt strange. I told myself I just wasn’t used to being behind the wheel—in Reading I’d generally relied on public transport. Still, I was aware that there was far more to it than that. Approaching Abbots Newton, my surroundings looked different and their inviolate peace took on an alien edge: trees rustling, a flock of birds taking off unexpectedly, not a single sound that could have been made by people.
In the Spider's House Page 2
