The second house they saw was empty and Jill liked it much better: an austere stone box set back from the road, two-up two-down, unfurnished. The empty square rooms, where light shifted on the limewashed walls, seemed hardly differentiated from outdoors – in fact there was ivy growing through one corner under the roof, which Jill didn’t mind. She had an excited idea that a life lived up here would be purged of everything unnecessary and distracting: in the evenings when the children were asleep she would be able to write something at last, go back to her Greek translations. She and Mikey stood together at an opened window upstairs, looking out past the woods and Forestry Commission plantations of pine, towards the bare tops of the moor, where the sunlight was falling mildly and sweetly, bringing out the colour of the heather. Jill said she thought she’d be happy in this house. There seemed some question about exactly what the rent was, but she might be able to afford it.
— It’s a long way from anywhere, Mikey warned her. — The weather’s not always as nice as this. You could get snowed up in the winter. What would you do to get around until you’d passed your driving test?
— I’m sure there must be a bus, Jill said gaily. — We could get bikes. I could put the baby on the back of mine.
She was staring out at that far-off sunlit patch of colour on top of the moor, and found herself longing to be transported there – as if it were a scene of Elysian pleasures, exempted from heaviness and difficulty. Gravely Mikey was considering her suggestion about the bikes. He said that some of the hills round here were pretty steep, for cycling. — Sorry to be such a wet blanket.
Jill drew her gaze away reluctantly. — You’re right. The bikes are an awful idea, we’d probably all be killed. Am I being a terrible nuisance? You’ve probably got things you ought to be doing in the office.
— Oh, don’t worry about me, he said, surprised. — I’m happy. I’d rather be outdoors on a day like this.
— Perhaps this house isn’t really practicable. You think I’m not serious about renting, don’t you? But I didn’t mean to waste your time. I’m at my wits’ end, I don’t know what else to do.
— That’s all right. There are other places to see. Nobody finds their ideal home first time. We’ll make a note of this one, I don’t think there’s been much interest in it, so there’s no great hurry. Not everyone’s keen on ivy growing through the roof. We could check which buses go past. Or you may turn out to be brilliant at driving, and pass your test first time, you never know.
— But I can’t afford the lessons, Jill said. — Or the car.
She turned from the window to face him ruefully, as if across these infinite complications, lifting her hands towards him, palms up in a fatalistic gesture, giving up the lost cause of herself, expressing the comedy of her predicament. Only as she turned toward him he was also turning and opening his hands out, perhaps to console her, and it was as if they combined in an intention that neither had actually intended. Their kiss – just the lightest, delighted hanging on to one another and brushing of lips, at first – was so unexpected that it floated free for a few moments from their real lives, as if it was hardly happening. It was all mixed up, in Jill’s sensations, with the tobacco-brown irresponsibility she had imagined on the moor. And because they had had no time to prepare for this kissing, it was surprisingly skilful and suave, not the usual clumsily deliberate thing. It wasn’t truly passionate or sexual either, to begin with: tender, like a kiss in a dream. They really were in the middle of nowhere. Afterwards they stepped apart in the strange room with its greenish light, and were quite confused and shy; Mikey apologised.
— Oh, don’t be sorry, she said. — I’m not sorry.
She saw how his reddish fair hair was clipped close to the raw skin above his ears and at the nape of his neck, and she thought he was chafing inside his shirt collar and tie and his crumpled suit. It was a long time since Jill had kissed anyone except her husband, and she had forgotten how abrupt the transformation was, how the smiling surface of personalities and faces receded and you were thrust into brash new perspectives, up against the flesh and the inner life of a man, with his heat and his smells, and the nuances of his movements which betrayed how he withheld himself, or gave himself. In Mikey’s case, thank goodness, the smells were pleasant: of soap and then something sweetish and lemony, like dried grass. She was still hanging on to him with both hands, grasping his sleeves so that he couldn’t pull away from her in his embarrassment. As the married woman, she knew she must take the initiative, if anything more was going to happen between them without drawn-out prevarication. When she kissed him again – pushing harder this time, running the spread fingers of her hand up from his nape through his bristling short hair, cupping the back of his skull and drawing his mouth down more deeply and heavily against hers – she felt how, if she took this lead, then he would follow her. But what now? They couldn’t do anything in here, on the bare floor. He didn’t even have a proper coat to take off, for her to lie on.
— You know, she said, — we could take a look at the Goods’ cottage, the one in Cutcombe wood. In so many ways – I mean, apart from running water and things – that would be more convenient. I know that it’s unlocked. We could go there now.
— I did enquire about it. It’s not one of the estates we deal with. Strictly speaking.
— But let’s take a look, she insisted. — Right now. Not in your professional capacity. Just as a friend.
Jill hardly spoke, all the way back down into the valley. Only she told him where to park: there was a passing place he could pull into, at the side of the road. She didn’t want the excitement which was choking her up and suffusing her to leak away – surely he felt the same, she knew he did. Towards the end of that first dreamlike, innocent kiss, something had changed between them – but if they began talking about ordinary things, then they would lose the way they had torn through the ordinary fabric of the day, to get to what they wanted. The clunk of the car door when Mikey slammed it shut reverberated like a blow inside her, as if her body were hollowed out. She went ahead of him on the path through the woods – this wasn’t the same path she had taken with the children, or with Tom, but a steeper one, quicker, weaving down between the trees. They were neither of them wearing suitable shoes, and from time to time they slipped on the leaf mould, grabbing at branches to stop themselves, never quite falling. Every so often Jill looked round at Mikey coming after her and smiled, putting all her encouragement into that smile – nothing could go wrong, they were immune, nothing could touch them. She bent down and took off her heels, then continued in her stocking feet, carrying her shoes in her hand, smiling back at him again, not feeling any pain from the sharp stones and twigs on the path, or the bramble that dragged against her calf, tearing her tights. The cottage door would still be unlocked, they wouldn’t meet anyone. She knew all this would work out.
She had supposed that when they pushed open the door, they would find all the mess of Tom’s night on the floor in the Goods’ cottage. But to her surprise the little room was perfectly tidy; he must have put away all that bedding, although he never so much as straightened the sheets at home. Even the slice of bread in its plastic bag was gone from the floor; only the cold fire in the hearth and the empty brandy bottle were signs that the two of them had ever been in here. Of course she couldn’t exclaim over any of this to Mikey. They stood in the doorway, peering into the little room which was a dark cave carved from the brilliance of the afternoon outside. Jill still had her shoes in her hand. She had imagined carrying on with Mikey where she and Tom had left off, on the floor in this room: now that didn’t make sense.
— You couldn’t live here, Mikey said sternly. — It’s horrible.
When they went inside and the door swung shut behind them, they could hardly make each other out until their eyes got used to the dimness: his shirt front was a looming patch of white, unattainable. The house with Mikey in it seemed flimsy as a doll’s house – Jill saw its impossibility through his eyes. —
Never mind, she said, falsely bright, crossing to the tiny window which was deep-set in the stone wall, looking out into the treetops where the end of the valley fell steeply away below them. — It doesn’t matter. It was only an idea.
He opened a cupboard door and found the stairs behind it, disappeared as if he were climbing up inside a well: she heard each step creak with his weight, and then his footsteps as he prowled close above her head. Leaving her shoes at the bottom of the stairs, she went up noiselessly after him. The first bedroom was all but filled up with a double bed, heaped with a tangle of blankets and eiderdowns where Tom must have dropped them; the sloping walls were papered with a pattern of pink baskets overflowing with fruit, and the air was stuffy with the tainted smell of ancient cloth, heated by the sun shining down through the roof. Old clothes and yellowed newspapers and magazines were piled up on the floor all around the bed. There was another, single bed in a second room, with a few rough blankets on it. — In this day and age, Mikey said, — you can’t believe people still live like this. You’d be surprised at some of what we see, in the property business.
She told him how Mrs Good who’d lived here used to give her sweets, which she had thrown away. Judging by the mess, he said, that was very sensible.
— When I’m an old woman I want to give everything away, so there’s nothing to leave behind.
— You won’t be this kind of old woman. You’d never let things get into this state.
— How do you know? I might become one of the crazy ones, frightening children.
He smiled indulgently. — There are decent people and there are people who just don’t care. You have to have self-respect.
Jill wondered what Mikey thought about her self-respect – not much, probably, as she’d brought him here. She was losing her confidence that he wanted her; perversely, the more he seemed like a stranger to her, remote and rather stolidly conventional, the more attractive she found him. How had she not seen that his bulky tall physique, cramped in the tiny room, might gain this power over her? She had been a fool, imagining all the power was on her side. Perhaps he was right – there were decent people and she wasn’t one of them. — You don’t really believe that, do you? she said. — Some people with tidy houses behave awfully and cruelly and aren’t decent at all.
Mikey was struggling with the latch on the casement window. He said they could do with some air.
— So you can’t imagine me living here?
— It’s not a fit place to bring children.
— I could make it nice, she stubbornly said. — Clean it up, clear it out. Put up nice curtains. You’d be amazed what a difference those little details make.
When Mikey finally got the window open the breeze blowing in was a relief, flicking at the newspapers on the floor. He turned back to Jill with a closed and preoccupied look as if he were worried by something else apart from her; for a moment she thought he was going to put her aside regretfully but firmly and head downstairs, saying he had to get back to the office. Instead, without any preamble, he seized her by the shoulders and began kissing her again: not on the mouth this time but on her hair and her neck, pressing her head between the palms of his big hands. Then he was kissing her breasts through the cloth of her blouse, undoing its buttons determinedly one by one, tugging at them if they resisted, so that she had to help in case he pulled them off.
— Do you mind this? he said distractedly.
She reassured him that she didn’t mind, and tried to unbutton his shirt in turn and undo his tie, encouraging him to undress; but he wouldn’t, and she thought perhaps he didn’t want to be naked in such a filthy place. At least she managed to slide the shirt up his chest, so that it bunched under his arms. He undid his trousers and kicked off his shoes, that was all; Jill spread out the slithery pink eiderdown on the bed for them to lie on, then took off her tights and knickers. She could feel that the feathers in the eiderdown underneath her were clumped together with damp. Mikey’s body, what she could see of it, was very different to Tom’s, so brown and lithe and heedless; Mikey’s was thick and white with a flat, broad, sad bottom, and his back was freckled. All the time he was kicking off his shoes, having to yank at the laces, hopping on one foot, then manoeuvring to get on top of her and inside her, he had his eyes closed, or half-closed. And he said strange gasping things, said he loved her and had always loved her – but she was sure this was only the rhythm of his encouragement to himself, giving himself sentimental permission to let go. His extremity helped to bring on some strong sensations of pleasure for Jill, though they didn’t get anywhere very far.
— Are you protected? he asked in a shamed voice, muffled against her shoulder, when it was all rather quickly over. — It’s a bit late to ask.
— Oh yes. Don’t worry about that.
This wasn’t actually the truth, but Jill didn’t care, it was the last thing on her mind. After Mikey had zipped up his trousers, turning away from her to do it, she saw there was quickly a wet patch darker against the dark material, and thought that Rose would notice in the office, and that the women would notice when he took his suit to the cleaners. She was glad she’d left some mark on him.
Ali had fallen off the front wall into the road. Now she had a huge blue-green lump on her forehead, and was sitting in all the dignity of her sorrows at the kitchen table, being comforted by her grandmother. Her face was blotched from crying and there was still some low-level snuffling, but actually she was beginning to feel proud of the seriousness of her accident. Sophy was playing pat-a-cake with her and feeding her little bits of buttered toast with jam. Her fall was the other children’s fault: Hettie had lifted her up to sit with them in their den in the privet hedge on top of the wall beside the gatepost, but of course she was too little to keep still, and kept leaning over to poke her fingers into the crumbly mortar between the stones, where trailing weeds were rooted and creatures lived. It was a long way down to the road. The others had led her inside with solemn faces, each holding by the wrist onto one of the poor hands with dirty grit stuck in the soft pads of flesh, which were flecked with blood: the blasts of her howling were like trumpets announcing them.
But their grandmother wasn’t cross – Hettie and Roland were having buttered toast and jam too, and drinking milky tea copiously sweetened. In the aftermath of the drama the atmosphere in the kitchen was hushed and admonished, almost holy. Hettie got out the painting book Sophy had bought her last time she was in town; you painted with clear water and the colours came out magically in the paper. It was satisfying work, cutting out all the compromise of creative endeavour. Roland sat arranging his plastic letters, pretending he was making words. Then he actually did make one, copying it carefully out of Sophy’s cookery book: plain, from plain flour. Hettie made a big fuss of him. — It’s a real word, isn’t it, Granny? See now, Roly, you can write! You can really write.
It began to be evening, their mother was late. They had eaten their dinner at midday, so there was no serious meal to cook; Hettie and Roland were sent over to buy eggs from Mrs Brody for their supper, holding hands to cross the road as Granny told them, even though there were almost never any cars. If they’d become positively enthusiastic about eggs, despite the slime, it was partly because they were drawn to what was thrilling and dreadful in this quest to fetch them. The Brodys’ farm was dark, not pretty like Roddings where Mrs Smith grew flowers and the windows and doors of the farmhouse were painted a bright jolly green. Even the Brodys’ red-brown cows smelled worse than the Smiths’ black-and-white ones and seemed more outsize and sinister, stretching their throats and bellowing with eyes rolled back, jostling and clambering onto one another in the muck, in the grim yard of furrowed concrete. Weeds grew through a heap of tyres, and the hens pecked around the wrecks of ancient cars; high in the barn wall above them the evening light shone through the ruined empty dove cote. When Mrs Brody came to the kitchen door she was always nursing a cup of tea against her apron, as if she were keeping it warm – her teeth were brow
n from all the tea she drank, and sometimes the children didn’t understand her because she spoke with a broad accent. She put the money they paid her in a cracked old mug on the windowsill, painted pink and gold, that said A Present From Ilfracombe. Their granny always washed the eggs before she used them.
Roland’s concentration was entirely taken up, on their way back across the road, by holding on to the precious paper bag, one hand supporting it from underneath. But something made Hettie look around consciously, as if Kington became real to her for the first time – not as a mere background to her thoughts and plans, but having its own authority. The evening was as wide open as a spacious room. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and everything was touched with a warm russet-pink light – the rutted lane, the green growth in the hedges, the clouds of midges so excitedly stirred up. She asked her brother, didn’t he just love it here? Even the Brodys’ dirty farm seemed part of her happiness. Some bird plummeted past, belly low to the road; then those birds seemed to be all around them, darting and twittering in their high-pitched restlessness which was also soothing. Roland shrugged her enthusiasm off as if it were frivolous, distracting him from his mission. He carried the paper bag scrupulously inside the house.
A car was approaching through the lanes, disrupting the quiet; when it came into sight Hettie recognised the red one from the estate agents. She knew that her mother had been looking around for places they could move into – they might come and live down here in the country, and she would have to start at a new school. Although this prospect was fearful, she felt sure now that it was what she wanted. The car stopped noisily just short of where Hettie waited at the garden gate, and then for a few minutes more her mother didn’t get out even though she had seen Hettie and waved to her, but sat on in the passenger seat, talking with the man who was driving. After she had climbed out, she leaned in through the window again, thanking him, telling him she’d be in touch, and then the red car reversed into the Brodys’ drive and drove off, its noise subsiding in the evening air. Her mother was standing with the light behind her, and it was shining through her hair which had come down somehow from its French knot while she was out. She was fixing it now, standing in the middle of the road with the hairpins in her mouth, hands up behind her head, twisting round the long tail of her hair and skewering it in place. Because of the brightness, Hettie couldn’t see her face properly; she didn’t like to rush up to her while she was preoccupied, but began her confession anyway.
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