The Path to the Lake

by Susan Sallis

  About the Book

  Viv’s marriage to David has never been a conventional one, but when he dies – in an accident for which she blames herself – it is as if her whole world has collapsed around her.

  She escapes her grief by endlessly running, mainly around the nearby lake, which was once a popular place of recreation but is now desolate and deserted.

  But she finds that her running can never really heal the pain. To do that would take something truly extraordinary . . .

  Contents

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Also by Susan Sallis

  Copyright

  The Path to the Lake

  Susan Sallis

  To my family

  Prologue

  The lake was finished in the spring of 1922. These man-made lidos were being created all over the country, but on the Somerset coast they were particularly popular because the tide-fall exposed rocks and mud, which made the sea inaccessible to swimmers until it was high on the shingle. Man-made lakes collected water each high tide and could be drained and cleaned annually. They could be made deep enough for divers, and shallow enough for children. There could be sun terraces and proper changing rooms and deckchairs and model boats and pedaloes. And if the lie of the land was right, they were relatively cheap to create.

  George Jackson was one of the masons employed by the local council. He lived in Cardiff, and took digs on the Somerset side of the Bristol Channel with Mrs Stevens down on the Pill – which was what the Somerset people called their little harbours. The night before the Grand Opening he took her daughter, Nellie Stevens, on a tour of the site. She had viewed it from above as it took shape, but to walk on the carefully cambered surface seemed to her to be terrifying. She did not understand how anyone could commit themselves to the sea, even when it was filtered and tamed into this enormous cavernous space. She clutched George’s arm and as they stumbled towards the far wall in what would be the deep end, she kept her head tilted upwards towards the stars. He was carrying a galvanized bucket, but he managed to pat her hand indulgently and ask her again whether she had brought the birthday present with her. They reached the far wall, four feet above her head, and she leaned her back to it and looked the way they had come. ‘Told you I had, George. How many more times?’ She was breathing quickly, as if they had run the length of the deep hole. The diving tower was silhouetted against the night sky. It was taller than the headland. No one would dare to climb to the top and dive off, surely?

  He put down the bucket and followed her gaze. It was the biggest project he had carried out so far. He was deeply pleased with it.

  ‘Folks are going to be happy here, Nell,’ he whispered. Sound was odd at this depth, and the sibilants carried around the wall, leapt over the closed sluice gate and completed the circuit. ‘And we had something to do with it.’

  ‘You did, you mean.’ He had no idea how this place affected her; she was cold with fear. It was like a gigantic tomb.

  ‘I did it for you, Nell. You know that. And your birthday present is going to make it ours. Proper-like. No one will know it’s here, ’cept you and me. How many folks has their own private lake, our Nell?’ He was laughing. ‘Come on now, how many?’

  She looked into his face. He always made her feel special, but this business about a private lake – what was he on about now?

  He turned her around and put both her hands on the wall and moved them around. She squeaked. The wall was rough. He stilled her left hand when her arm was at full stretch, took the forefinger and gently pushed it. It went into a hole a little bigger than itself. She squeaked again; supposing there was a spider? She did not actually mind spiders, but everyone else did, so she squeaked again just in case. He was laughing in her ear now, her head was full of him.

  He reached into her pocket and took out the so-called birthday present, put it into the palm of her left hand and wrapped her forefinger around it. Very gently he adjusted their mutual grip and inserted it into the hole which he had made especially for it the previous night. ‘Fits perfect,’ he murmured. He lowered their hands, kissed her again and took the wet linen cover from the bucket. ‘Won’t take but a minute,’ he said as he reached inside and then up again and cemented her birthday present into place.

  He stepped back and looked at it. She looked, too, and saw again the Victorian door knob, and felt again the pang of disappointment that it had not been a ring. But she loved him, and she said, ‘It looks very . . . important, George.’

  He was delighted. ‘That’s just what it is, Nellie-girl. Important. The door to our lake. When I found that there door knob I wanted to put it on our first cottage.’ He sighed. And then seemed to shake himself. ‘But there, this is our lake, and there’s our door to prove it, and all the people that come here and laugh and splash about and don’t know nothing . . . they will be our guests! And you understand that, Nellie.’ He was kissing her crazily, and laughing in her ear again, and she wanted to tell him about getting wet cement on her summer dress, but she did not. She suddenly saw it all through his eyes. Just for a minute. And she knew it was the most romantic gesture in the whole wide world.

  One

  November 2005

  THE LITTLE BUNGALOW crouched in its laurels at the top of the hill, a full two miles from the old marine lake, less than that from the pier. It seemed to be completely isolated, but it was almost within the grounds of the Elizabethan manor, which had long been sold and converted into a nursing home. From the sandy road leading to the manor it looked like what it was, one of the many one-storeyed bungalows put up without planning permission between the wars. But this one seemed to be in the wrong place. Surely if you wanted to live by the sea you would build your bungalow or chalet within reach of the Victorian pier or marine lake? Certainly not on the top of one of the outcrops of the Mendips, so steep that before the advent of the motor car the lord of the manor had stables two miles away on the moors and harnessed four horses to his carriage for his journey home.

  But when you walked along the side of the little bungalow, you could understand the reason for it. The garden dropped away to a sheer cliff; below that lay the town and to the right was the sea. The view was breathtaking. The gulls and crows and sweeps of starlings flew beneath as well as above.

  The Venables bought it in 1996. Vivian Venables taught in a primary school twenty-five miles further down the coast, but the motorway made light of the distance, and though she did not like the drive during the holiday season it was worth it to come home every evening to the peculiarly insubstantial dwelling at the very top of Christmas Tump, and watch the sun drown itself in the Bristol Channel. The weather often came over from Wales, and was a constant interest. She loved to watch the prevailing south-westerlies bend the trees into the land so that it looked as though e
very leaf, every blade of grass, had been groomed with a curry comb. The thunderheads piling up after a hot day would make her heart pump with excitement. The short daylight hours of winter became precious; at weekends she would sit in the window with her knitting and become part of their gentle fading.

  David worked from home; the second bedroom was set up as his studio, and in between ‘earning a crust’ – as he called his cartoons – he would take a sketch book into the garden and block in views which would be developed later into unusually vivid watercolours. There was a great deal of sky to be seen from the Tump, and as he wryly pointed out to Viv, not many people wanted to hang a skyscape above their fireplace.

  ‘Just you wait and see!’ she told him. ‘They’ll be queueing for them after your first exhibition.’ But David was happy with the way things were. He loved being at home, keeping house and garden ‘going’, working in his studio most of the day, and painting the sea and the sky when he found time. He had worked for the same national newspaper for many years, and had built a reputation for genuinely funny cartoons that were also political comments. Until he met Viv he had felt he was marking time; one day he would have accumulated enough money to give up his day job and become a ‘proper artist’. In the last ten years, though in other ways he was still waiting, contentment had soothed away any sense of dissatisfaction surrounding his work. It had led him to Viv and his life here. What more could he ask?

  His father lived in a village in a fold of the Mendip range, where he had retired from his job as a curator in the Bristol museum the same year David and Viv had married. He was proud of his son, and professed himself ‘tickled pink’ by his amazing ability to capture on paper the very essence of a person with a few slashed lines. But he could not take this skill seriously as a career – certainly not as a profession. He rarely saw it as inspirational; if he had been forced to describe it, he would have called it a knack. Until Viv arrived. She changed everything.

  For one thing, David was thirty-seven when he met her, and she was thirty. Neither of them had had any permanent relationship before, indeed had gone out of their way to avoid it. They had fought against this one. David had told her bluntly that he was happier to be on his own: he could not remember his mother and had been brought up in a masculine household, well able to cook and clean, encouraged to speak his mind. Viv had smiled with relief. She had also lost her mother as a child, and had been frightened of her father, who was crazy with grief. She had left home as soon as possible.

  She was a great admirer of David’s work, and when he showed her some of his abstracts she felt honoured. He wanted to move to what he called the ‘flat lands’ so that he could begin to paint sky, and she helped to set him up in a studio in Bridgwater because she had been teaching there for almost ten years and knew it well. And then, because he had told her right from their first meeting how much he needed space, she left him to it. It was a shock to find him waiting by the school gate, asking plaintively what on earth the difference was between stewing beef, shin and skirt. As he had been looking after himself for the last twenty years this was obviously some kind of ruse. He admitted as much, and then told her sheepishly that work was not going very well and he needed to establish a proper routine, and if she popped in after school it might help. She looked at him and burst out laughing.

  ‘What is it you need? An organizer? Cook?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know. I do know I moved down here so that I could see more of you, not less.’

  ‘But I explained to you that there could never be anything between us. I can never have a – a – relationship. And you said the same thing.’ Her face flamed.

  His frown deepened. ‘I know all that, but we were wrong. We were talking about our sexual impotence. We have a relationship, Viv. We are friends.’ He took a breath, and said emphatically, ‘We’re such good friends, Viv. If we lived next door to each other or in a block of flats, we’d see each other every day. Can’t we do that? We’ll work together. You have your lesson plans and your marking. Surely you need someone to talk to about your work? I do. When I was in Bristol and we got together once a week, it was marvellous. Really helpful. And I hoped – I thought – we could do it on a daily basis, so I moved.’

  So though she laughed again and shook her head, she got into his car and went back to his flat. He was a good man; he was himself. Because he had no armour surrounding him she thought he needed protection. She never dreamed he needed protection from her.

  The daily visit was established immediately. As soon as school was over each day, she went to his flat. For her it was like walking into sunlight. She had thought that most men had something of her father in them. She learned that David’s gentle humour was part of him. Gradually, very gradually, she relaxed into this wonderful, guilt-free relationship. In spite of her own armour, it began to develop and grow.

  After a walk to Crooks Peak during the summer of l995 he said casually, ‘I saw this bungalow today. On the top of one of the hills that drop into the sea further up the coast. It would be half an hour’s drive to school.’

  She said, ‘Do you mean . . . live together? In a bungalow? Buy a house together?’

  He said, slightly surprised, ‘Well, yes. We’re together most of our free time, anyway. And this house is . . . well, special.’

  She looked at him, then away. She was a long, rather angular woman, with brown, shoulder-length hair which she wore ‘done up’ for school; her face was bony, eyes blue. David had done many sketches of her. The first one showed a typical blue-stocking with glasses on the end of a long nose. The last, dashed off a week ago, was just a face, classically beautiful, framed and emphasized by a coif. She had not recognized it. When he told her that was how she looked when she was thinking, she said, ‘You see me as a nun?’

  And after a considered pause he had nodded. ‘One of you is a nun. Yes.’ And after pausing herself, she had simply nodded.

  She referred to that sketch now.

  ‘Nuns don’t live with men friends, David.’

  He grinned suddenly. ‘They do. I saw a film once. Deborah Kerr, I think it was. Might have been Virginia McKenna. Looked a lot like you – good facial bones, very slim. She was a nun, and she fell in love and renounced her vows and married whoever it was. Can’t remember his name.’

  She cut in quickly. ‘I don’t look a bit like those two. I’m that first sketch you did. The blue-stocking.’

  ‘You’re that, too, and other things, it’s confusing. But very interesting.’ He leaned sideways trying to engage her averted gaze. ‘Viv, there was another film. About a bloke and a woman who were terrific friends for years and did not realize they were also in love. And when they did they got married and were wonderfully happy.’

  She sighed. ‘I saw that one, too. They were married about a year, and then he died. In fact they got married because he was dying.’ She lifted her head and looked at him suddenly. ‘My God. You’re not ill, are you?’

  He held that look. His own eyes were grey and very steady. He whispered, ‘No, but I think I will be if you don’t agree to buying this house and living with me.’

  She tried to get it back to being light. ‘Which one do you want, nun or blue-stocking?’

  ‘I’m afraid I want all of them.’

  She became very still. ‘You don’t mean all this.’

  He said again, slowly. ‘I want all of them.’

  ‘But you know – I thought you understood – surely you understood?’

  ‘I understand. I have shown you that I understand. When I spoke of mutual impotence I meant . . . I understand.’

  ‘Then why change anything?’ Her voice was nearly querulous, and she brought it down a notch. ‘Living together . . . it will change the status quo—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, flatly and unequivocally.

  She felt her eyes filling with tears. She said, ‘Then . . . no.’

  He leaned towards her and saw her hands clench by her sides. He cupped her thin face, held it sti
ll, kissed her, then whispered, ‘See? We can do this. We can be good friends and loving friends.’ He held her hand very gently.

  When he leaned away, smiling at her, she said, ‘You would be willing to accept that kind of relationship? Always?’

  ‘Unless you tell me otherwise.’

  Her voice was still controlled but very low. ‘You know I will never change, David. You say you understand. Perhaps . . . you don’t.’

  ‘I think we are talking about sex. About sleeping together. Cohabiting.’ He was smiling, cajoling her. He leaned close again and she leaned away from him. He said with emphasis, ‘It doesn’t matter, Viv. Not to me. There are so many kinds of love. We know most of them. Do we throw all of them away because we cannot have that one, that particular one?’

  She said nothing, and after a while he stood up and went to the kitchen and made tea. He stirred sugar into hers and passed it to her. She looked up and smiled through the steam.

  ‘That nun. Oh, and that blue-stocking.’ Her smile widened into a grin. ‘They both love you.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘There are no sleeping beauties underneath them, however. No glamorous princess waiting to be woken with a kiss.’

  ‘I couldn’t cope with a princess. Or glamour.’

  They both laughed.

  He said, still laughing, ‘Viv Venables. It sounds good.’

  ‘I don’t think we should marry.’ She put her tea down carefully. ‘Face facts, David. You might want children. Meet that princess. It would be so much simpler if we didn’t marry.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t. The bungalow needs a married couple. And I thought you understood. I cannot father children, Viv. ’

  Flustered, she said, ‘Oh my God. It’s all about a house!’ She threw up her hands in mock horror and nearly knocked her tea over.

  He looked at her and made her look at him. Grey eyes and blue eyes. He said, ‘Would it make it easier if I told you I had only five years to live?’

  She laughed, but then checked both of them. ‘Don’t say things like that, David – I’m serious. It’s tempting fate.’