Solsbury Hill

by Susan M. Wyler

  “What brought that up?”

  “Do you remember them?”

  “I don’t think I ever went on one. Did you?”

  “Yep.” She nodded. “Once at camp. I mean, I wasn’t the worst fool. I knew it was fake, but everyone kind of went along and there were a couple of kids who took it seriously and they were the ones who wound up crying when it was obvious—you know, eventually it gets kind of obvious there’s no such thing as a snipe, after the sun’s gone down and you’ve these bags in your hands with marshmallows on a hook to catch them.”

  “What are you saying, exactly?”

  The woolly sheep sometimes seemed to smile when they watched the cars go by. Eleanor wondered if they knew what a rarity they were, in the big world.

  “The older kids are in the trees making snipe sounds and telling you to run this way then that way. It’s sometimes what it’s been like, being here. Starting with that night I walked in on you, really. A rite of passage, more like a hazing . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Miles pulled over to the side of the road and parked, stretched his arm across the back of her seat, rested his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched.

  “You’re not comfortable, I know,” he said. “It was wrong to just show up.”

  She glanced at him, then out the window. “I don’t want to talk about serious things yet.”

  Having him next to her, she began to see the tapestry of things take shape. Threads hanging that hadn’t been woven in. The man in her mother’s letters, Martin Garrens, might still be in Scarborough, for one thing. She could hunt for Emily’s letters in the house, see if they were there somewhere after all, see what was in them. She wanted to find out what it meant that Mead had his own land somewhere, what he made of what had happened with his father, and why he didn’t live there. Not that she wanted him to live there.

  Here was Miles sitting beside her with his long legs under the dashboard, his body relaxed. Her hand on the gear shift knob so that when he wanted to, he could touch her. A major thread in the warp and weave was the sense of betrayal she felt when she left New York, when she landed in England. They needed to talk about that. But right now, she just felt this wave of weariness. She reached for his hand and said, “You know, Miles, in time I’m going to want to know how that happened. Why it happened. How planned it was. I’m hoping it was more like spontaneous and less like planned, but in either case I want you to tell me the truth. I don’t want to talk about it now, but sometime before you leave, I guess, we have to talk about why you went there.”

  “Eleanor, it was . . .”

  “But not now.” She raised the window. “You know, when I got home that night, I broke all those dishes. It was probably the morning by then, ’cause I’d stopped at Soho House and gone up to the pool.”

  His head turned to look at her face. “You did?”

  She nodded. She knew where he was going in his head. “I thought about stripping down to my bra and pants and swimming in that pool up there. On the way up, in the elevator, I saw it all exactly as it should have been. Some hot late-night drunk swim. But the reality was I had a sad solo drink at the bar and went back downstairs and got a cab home alone. Anyway, that’s when I broke all those dishes.”

  “You mean the Italian ones?” She’d piggybacked onto a business trip he’d taken to Milan, and they’d chanced upon a little shop with lovely, quirky, hand-painted pottery.

  “Yep.”

  “Tell me it’s not so . . .”

  “It hurts, eh?” she said.

  Miles put his hand on the back of her neck.

  The countryside rolled by and Miles commented on it, mile after mile. Smooth, sweet green on the side of the road, green that rose, green that rolled, green that sometimes rolled so high they lost sight of the sky. There were times that trees closed in on either side of the road, as through Stoney Haggs Rise, and then cleared to another endless stretch of green, dabbed with white sheep from Uncleby Hill, past and through some unappealing and modern-patched towns, till they pulled into York and found a car park.

  Whip ma Whop ma Gate—they passed a broad street sign that marked where the local whipping post had once been placed and walked down that narrow street to the church nearby and then down the shadowed street called the Shambles and into the Juicy Moosey, where she ordered a large Well Being and he a Green Peace.

  The buildings bent into each other and kept the lanes in shadow for most of the day. Narrow streets and passageways built for little people—half the size of Eleanor and Miles—a thousand years ago. Down the Shambles to Little Shambles, around a bend, then back again. The store windows were low to the ground and the doorways so low that Eleanor and Miles had to stoop to pass through them. Through a break in the wall they followed a sign to Newgate Market, a dank passage of stones and bricks on the other side of which lay an open square, a bustling market. It was nice to wander in a city neither of them knew. York was a quaint town and strange enough, to each of them, that they held hands moving through it.

  The bistro, which had a very good chef according to Miles’ phone, wasn’t warm in its decor but had a mix of aromas that were appealing. Miles held her elbow in his hand as the host escorted them to the table. He slipped her coat off her shoulders and said how pretty she looked in the skirt to her knees, the tailored Chanel and printed scarf. He pulled out her chair and touched the back of her neck where it was bare between the scarf and her hair in a full French twist held with a clip and not her glasses. Eleanor crossed her legs at the knees as Miles ordered red wine.

  With a gesture that was very Miles, he ran his fingers through the front swath of his thick hair. He’d done it the first time she saw him as she approached him on the playground when they were in the sixth grade. When he’d seen her coming toward him that day, he’d dropped the basketball he was dribbling and had run his hand through the thick hair to pull it off his forehead where it always fell. He always kept it long enough that it would fall there.

  “El,” he said.

  “Don’t be nervous,” she said.

  “I am nervous. Are you not nervous?”

  “I am, but it would be better if you weren’t.”

  “I’d no business just coming up, without calling, but I did leave messages.”

  “I know.”

  “I came to see you.”

  “I know.”

  “I was just at the hotel and . . .”

  “Pacing,” she said. He paced when a big deal was pending, and he paced when he watched the news.

  “Thanks for making it easy when I got there. I know I interrupted something.”

  Eleanor looked down at her hands and they sat quietly.

  “You seem different, you know?”

  “I’m sure I am.”

  The sommelier arrived with the wine and uncorked the bottle. Not a fan of silencing conversation for the performance of serving a meal, she asked how she seemed different.

  “More mature, I think.”

  “More mature.” She took her first swallow, invited him to elaborate.

  “More steady?”

  “I’m probably more confused.”

  “I was going to say more full. In French they’d say ‘good in your skin.’”

  “Ah.” A wave of tiredness overcame her and her eyelids actually weakened, drooped. A shot of a headache right above her left ear. “Well, I can tell you one thing. I can tell you one thing for sure. Without you, I’ve kind of had to pull things together, and I didn’t know how much you were doing for me before.”

  “Before when?”

  “Before now, before always. Since forever. It’s true. I think I realized it when I was flying here. Halfway across the ocean, what it was like to not have you there. Not just not next to me in a seat, but anywhere.”

  She could feel how he wanted to assure her that he was there, that he was
right here, that he was always there, would always be there, and she appreciated that he didn’t say it. She appreciated that he said, “Go on, I want to hear.”

  The headache was like a bolt in her temple. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “I don’t know if I have the energy for it.”

  “That’s okay.” Miles was still in a straightforward sense of time and place. She had been there, or somewhere near to that, all of her life. But she wasn’t there any longer. She wasn’t sure she ever would be again. Having seen what she’d seen and felt what she’d felt, even just the strength it took to stand against the wind on the moors, to feel the wildness of nature pushing against her, she had doubts about what mattered and what was real. She’d been invited to be brave enough to know things, to discover things about ancestry, to know herself sincerely.

  “Grazing menu,” he said. “How about if we order a few things to share?”

  “That always works.” She spoke softly.

  “Smoked eel, Whitby crab.” He looked to her for approval. “Rabbit pie and mash, fish and chips, ‘unusual carrots.’”

  “We have to have ‘unusual carrots,’ right? Taste these. They’re good.” She split and buttered a roll for him.

  “Jeez, it almost hurts more that you’re being so good to me, El. Can you tell me how awful it was? Can you kick me under the table right in my shin, even by accident?”

  “Wow, that’s extreme.” They had a brief laugh and then she got serious. “Yeah, I’m sure I can tell you. I went to Soho House hoping to do something awful that night. Our friend at the door assumed you were there and let me in. I was . . . I don’t even know what I was feeling. If you’d come by that night, I could have shown you. It was awful, what I felt. I’d never felt anything like it.” She took a long sip of wine. “Actually, it’s not true I hadn’t felt it before. Do you remember how cut off my dad was after Mom died?”

  This was the harshest thing she could say, though she hadn’t exactly intended it that way. It fell out. Onto the table and there it sat.

  “It was like that?” he said. “It was worse than that. I hurt you worse than that.”

  “As you know I’ve got a mind that’s good at not thinking about what’s just awful. Right?”

  “I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t about you . . .”

  “I know. I really do know that.” Her voice sounded high and young. She felt how vulnerable she would be if she bothered to ask more. “I mean, I sort of know, but that last day we were together, did you know you were seeing her? Miles, it’s not just what you did, it’s what I saw.”

  “Oh, God, I know.” He exhaled. His body cringed he was so uncomfortable.

  “Did you lie to me about where you were going that night?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She made an effort to avoid hysteria, to pull her feelings down low in her belly.

  “That’s kind of hard to believe, given the scene at the coffee shop the day before.”

  “I know.”

  “That was coincidence.”

  “Not coincidence. It was pure accident.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, what was the distinction. Was she going to tumble into the details of it?

  “You met the pixie when, then?”

  “We met her at a party. She flirted with me. You didn’t notice it, but that’s where we met her.”

  “I didn’t meet her,” she said.

  He dropped his head, rightly ashamed.

  He went on. “She was at the coffee shop that day and then she was at the bar we were at that night. The guys, lots of them left early, and I stuck around.”

  “By accident,” she said.

  They looked at each other for a long time. Finally she looked away and said, “Anyway, I’m here now,” she started. The conversation was over. There was nothing new to learn. “You’ve been my best friend forever. It’s something that happens, right? Stuff that happens to people.”

  “There you are being kind.”

  There was a large empty silence.

  “You know, El, I see it. You seem settled in yourself like I’ve never seen you.”

  It was impossible not to think of riding on the scarp that morning, at the top with the broken cliffs below. Both their heads of hair a tangle and the chestnut horses in a sticky sweat underneath them. Just that morning.

  “It was awful seeing you that way that night,” she said, “and it might have changed things for us in a way we can’t get back from.” She held his eyes and this was all the punishment she would give him. She didn’t blink. Though her eyelids felt weak, she didn’t blink. Her eyes bore into his, and his held steady. He was capable. He withstood the universe of understanding that bears no explanation, ineffable like love and death, truth and betrayal.

  The server announced the crab from Whitby and Eleanor remembered that Vikings once came into Whitby on wild-looking ships from the North Sea.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  He divided the grazing plates. Taking and giving some.

  “Tell me something, would you?” Human, he needed to hear it in black and white. “Was it unforgivable?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, not unforgivable.”

  She had no appetite for eel or crab or macaroni and cheese with ham hocks. “Could I have some water, please?” she asked the waiter and picked at the unusual carrots.

  The water came in a cleaned-out milk bottle, fresh and cold. He poured the water for them and they each drank a glass or two, because the food was rich with butter and also salty.

  Then she said, “We’ll stay here, right?”

  “Here in York?” His mood brightened.

  “Just the night, okay?”

  Facing him, she knew nothing was simple.

  As they ambled about in the narrow streets of the oldest part of town, she spoke in a low voice. “My mother lived here in that big house, when she was little, and back and forth all her life, and she came here for visits, and in all that time she never brought us here, Dad and me, and I’ve never even wondered about this place. I knew she was from some place and I never went looking for any of it.”

  “You were sad for a long time, checked out, in a way. It doesn’t surprise me.”

  When he offered her his arm, she slipped her arm through his and they walked through York much the way they walked in SoHo on the weekends. Wandering from one shop to another through the labyrinth of mews and alleys, she let him lead, because he knew how to lead her. He’d led her through so much that was hard in her life, when she couldn’t bear to find her way alone, that even after she’d begun to tread a path of her own, he didn’t know how not to lead her.

  After bourbon at a pub, they stepped off the curb to make way for others in the narrow passage. She knew some of this would never change: he would always be Miles Paxton, the boy who’d loved her since they were children.

  The boy who’d taken her, one day in the spring when she was seventeen, to Rockaway Beach, where he had invited her to get on a surfboard and ride with him. She’d worried that the awkward length and weight of her would topple them, but he had encouraged her to climb on, and she had surfed all day. In the evening, in front of her house, when he dropped her home, all salty and fresh from a day in the sea and the sun, she had wanted him to kiss her. His hair was thick and his lips were round. He had the smartest eyes she had ever seen, and it was the first time she had wanted to be kissed by anyone.

  Ahead on the right there was the light of a pub, and Miles led her, but Eleanor saw a bright light filling the night sky and she pulled him in that direction, down another street and around a sharp corner.

  “Excuse me, what is that?” Eleanor asked an old woman in a thick coat and sensible shoes.

  “Ah, ’tis th’ Minster. Tha’s not from here? Ye canna miss th’ Minster. Walk toward it,” she said, “anyone
can get ye there if ye lose tha sense of it.”

  They were now on a wide, busy street with buses and cars that zipped by, people moving with purpose, but they strolled along across the river, stopped to watch a boat pass under the bridge, its flat deck filled with chairs and quiet visitors.

  Now she led Miles, and several hundred yards down, just before seven thirty in the evening, their walk ended at the York Minster—a fantastic Gothic building with spires that reached to the heavens—and with their heads tipped back so their throats stretched, they followed the Gothic building all the way around to the south wall, a long stretch of yellow stone in an astounding structure. Lights lit up the building from below. She and Miles followed the sound of people and found them collecting at the west door.

  At seven thirty, the Ghost Tour began. The Ghost Trail of York and a delightful storyteller told the thirty people who followed behind tales of ghosts from the Romans and Normans and Stuarts and more. York had grown for two thousand years, he said, it had lived and grown, layer by layer, each century adding dregs, residue, and half-dead remains of scandals, plagues, murders, and hauntings.

  The storyteller showed blurry snapshots of ghosts caught just in the nick of time, in the blink of a spirited camera’s eye: a photo of a woman floating in a white gown, another of a man in top hat and cane alone in the cathedral.

  Eleanor wanted to talk to the storyteller, to ask what he made of what she thought she’d seen, what she’d imagined. She wanted to know if he believed in seeing phantoms and phantoms that could hold your hand and tell you about things.

  “He likes scaring the pants off of kids,” Miles said as they walked away. “Little kids and big kids.”

  “You don’t believe it.”

  “I’ve no idea. It might be true, but that guy’s a good actor.”

  The Guy Fawkes Inn was a dreamy place, and Eleanor was tired enough to sleep for two. Their room was blissfully beautiful with a four-poster bed that was draped in curtains they could pull all the way around and close themselves in. The curtains were lined with raw silk on the inside and on the outside an Italian linen printed with red, cream, and taupe flowers on a chocolate brown background. The place was luxurious. The rolled-rim tub was long and deep. There were white linen sheets, soft from hundreds of washings, and everything had the smell of lavender and lilac.