by Rosie Walsh
“I love this pub,” I said. “We used to come here when I was a kid. My little sister and I would roam feral and poke around in the stream while my parents and their friends got a little too jolly.”
Eddie took a good draft from his pint. “I grew up in Cirencester. Bit trickier to roam feral in the middle of a town. But we did come here once or twice.”
“Oh, really? When would that have been? How old are you?”
“Twenty-one,” Eddie said comfortably. “Although people say I look younger.”
He didn’t mind when I laughed. “Thirty-nine,” he said eventually. “I remember running around this garden when I was about—what, ten? Then my mum moved here in the late nineties, so I started coming here quite a lot. How old are you? Maybe you and I were feral together.”
A small fleck of suggestion. My app must be going mad.
“Oh, probably not. I moved to Los Angeles when I was still a teenager.”
“Really? That’s quite a move.”
I nodded.
“Did one of your parents take a job out there?”
“Something like that.”
“And are they still out there?”
“No. They live near here. Over toward Stroud.”
I angled my face away, as if that excused me skirting the edge of a lie. “So. Eddie. Tell me what you were doing on Sapperton Green on a weekday afternoon.”
He leaned down to stroke the walkers’ dog. “Visiting my mum. She lives up near the school.” A tiny hairline fracture passed through his voice. “What were you doing?” he asked.
“I walked from Frampton Mansell.” I nodded in the direction of my parents’ village.
He frowned. “But you didn’t come along the valley—you came from up the hill.”
“Well . . . I wanted to get some proper exercise, so I hiked up the hill and walked along the top. Along Broad Ride, in fact—it’s changed a lot,” I added quickly. This is becoming a minefield. “So overgrown! It used to be so wide and stately; people would bring their horses from all over for a gallop. Now it’s little more than a pathway.”
He nodded. “They do still gallop up and down it, even though it’s been banned. One of them came very close to mowing me down earlier.”
I smiled at the thought of anyone being able to mow down this big mass of man, horse or otherwise. It pleased me that he, too, liked to walk along that secret green corridor.
“I was like Moses of Sapperton,” he said. “Parting a Red Sea of cow parsley.”
We both sipped our drinks.
“So do you live round here?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, “although I get a lot of commissions from London, so I’m there a fair bit.” He slapped me suddenly on the calf.
“Horsefly,” he said softly, flicking the dead insect off his palm. “Eating your leg. Sorry.”
I took a long draw on the cider and felt the heady, sensual purr of alcohol and mild shock. “They’re bastards here in June,” he said. “They’re bastards all year, but especially in June.”
He showed me two angry bumps on his forearm. “One of them got me this morning.”
“I hope you bit it back.”
Eddie smiled. “I didn’t. They spend quite a lot of time sitting on horses’ private parts.”
“Of course. Yes.”
Before I’d asked permission of myself, I touched the bites on his skin. “Poor arm,” I said, although in a very matter-of-fact tone, because I was already embarrassed.
Eddie stopped laughing and turned to look at me. He met my gaze, a question in his eyes.
It was me who looked away first.
* * *
• • •
Sometime later I was comfortably drunk. Eddie was inside getting our third, or maybe fourth pint. I heard the beep-beep of the till as the landlord rang up his order, the crackle of something I hoped might be crisps, and the lazy whine of a plane dragging across the sky.
The lichened surface of our old picnic table had begun to feel like sandpaper on the soft backs of my thighs. I looked around for another, less abrasive table, but found none, so I flopped down in the grass like the ramblers’ dog from earlier on. I smiled, happy and intoxicated. Grass tickled my ear. I wanted never to leave. I wanted simply to be here; no phone, no responsibilities. Just Eddie David and I.
As I gazed up at the sky, the earth warm underneath me, I caught an old ripple of memory. This, I thought lazily. The smell of warm grass, the soft patter and rustle of it, layered with buzzing insects and snatches of hummed songs. This had been me once. Before Tommy had moved to America and adolescence had exploded under my feet like a landmine, this had been enough.
“Man down,” Eddie said, coming down the steps with a beer, a cider and—worshipful praises!—crisps! “You claimed to be a hard drinker.”
“I forgot about cider,” I admitted. “But it should be noted that I haven’t passed out. I just got fed up with that prickly bench.” I hauled myself up on my elbows. “Anyway, you must open those crisps straightaway.”
Eddie sat on the grass next to me, removing from his pocket what looked like an uncomfortable bunch of keys. They were held together by a little wooden key ring in the shape of a mouse.
“Who’s that guy?” I asked, as Eddie handed me a pint. “I like him.”
Eddie turned to look at the key ring. After a little pause he smiled. “She’s called Mouse. I made her when I was nine.”
“You made her? Out of wood?”
“I did.”
“Oh! Gosh, how lovely.”
Eddie ran a finger along Mouse. “She’s been with me through a lot,” he smiled. “She’s my taliswoman. Anyway. Cheers.” He leaned back on his elbows, turning his face to the sun.
“So we’re just drinking in the middle of the day,” I surmised happily. “While everyone else is working. We’re just sitting here, drinking.”
“I’d say so.”
“We’re drinking in the middle of the day and now we are quite drunk. And we are having a nice time, I think.”
“Will we resume conversation, or are you going to spend the afternoon making statements?”
I laughed. “As I said earlier, Eddie: clarity. It keeps me on the straight and narrow.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to just eat some crisps and drink my beer. Let me know when you’re done.”
He opened the crisps and passed them over.
I like him, I thought.
Since arriving in this secret garden, Eddie and I had sifted through our childhood memories and discovered hundreds of historical intersections. We’d walked the same hills, been to the same sweaty nightclubs; we’d sat on the same towpath at sunset and counted dragonflies dancing above the reed beds in the old Stroudwater canal.
All of this had been separated by only a couple of years. I imagined sixteen-year-old me meeting eighteen-year-old Eddie, and wondered if he would have liked me then. I wondered if he liked me now.
Earlier on I had told him about my nonprofit organization and he’d been delighted, had asked me endless questions. He understood straightaway the difference between our Clowndoctors and the regular entertainers who’d visit a children’s hospital. And he understood that I did it because I couldn’t not, no matter how many funding cuts we suffered, no matter how frequently our guys were treated as mere party clowns. “Wow,” he’d said, after I’d shown him a clip of two of our Clowndoctors working with a child who’d been too afraid to go into surgery. He looked actually quite emotional. “That’s incredible. I . . . Good for you, Sarah.”
He had shown me pictures of the furniture and cabinetry that he made in a workshop on the edge of Siccaridge Wood. That was his job—people commissioned him to make beautiful things out of wood for their homes: kitchens, cabinets, tables, chairs. He loved wood. He loved furniture. He loved the smell of timber wax
and the crack of a biscuit joint tightening in a clamp, he told me; had given up trying to force himself to do something more profitable.
He showed me a picture of an old barn: small, stone, with a gently pitched roof, sitting in the sort of forest clearing that’d be right at home in a Hans Christian Andersen tale.
“That’s my workshop. It’s also my home. I’m a real-life hermit; I live in a barn in a wood.”
“Oh, good! I’ve always wanted to meet a hermit! Am I the first human you’ve talked to in weeks?”
“Yes!” Then: “No,” he added quickly. In his eyes I caught the edge of something I couldn’t grasp. “I’m not actually a hermit. I have friends and family and a busy life.”
After a pause he smiled. “I didn’t need to say that, did I?”
“Probably not.”
He cleared the picture of the barn from his phone, just as it started ringing. This time, he switched it off, although without any visible irritation. “Well, that’s my job, anyway. I love it. Although there have been years when I’ve earned almost nothing. They’ve been less fun.” A tiny spider crawled up one of his arms and he watched it, pushing it gently away when it tried to enter the sleeve of his T-shirt. “A few years back I even thought about getting a proper job, something with a guaranteed pay packet. But I can’t do a nine-to-five. I’d . . . Well, I suspect I’d struggle. Maybe die. Something bad would happen; I wouldn’t survive it.”
I considered this.
“I find it rather annoying when people say things like that,” I said eventually. “I think only a tiny handful of people would actually choose to be in an office nine to five. But you have to remember, most people don’t have a choice. You’re quite privileged, being able to do something like cabinetry out of a workshop in the Cotswolds.”
“True,” Eddie said. “And of course I know what you mean, but I’m still not sure I agree. It’s my contention that everyone has a choice, in everything. On some level.”
I watched him.
“What they do, how they feel, what they say. It’s just somehow become the received wisdom that we don’t have a choice. About anything. Jobs, relationships, happiness. All beyond our control.” He shooed the tiny spider back into the grass. “It can be frustrating, watching everyone complaining about their problems, never wanting to discuss solutions. Believing they’re a victim of other people, of themselves, of the world.” That tiny hairline fracture had returned to his voice.
After a beat he turned to me, smiling. “I sound like an arsehole.”
“A bit.”
“I didn’t mean to sound unsympathetic. I just meant . . .”
“It’s okay. I know what you meant. And it’s an interesting point.”
“Maybe. But expressed very poorly. I’m sorry. I’ve just . . .” He paused. “I’ve been quite worn down by my mother recently. I love her, of course, but I sometimes wonder if she even wants to be happy. And then I feel awful because I know that it’s pure brain chemistry, and of course she wants to be happy.”
He scratched his shins. “You’re just the first person I’ve talked to in the last few days who hasn’t been feeling sorry for themselves. I got carried away. Sorry. Thank you. The end.”
I laughed, and he leaned back, letting one of his knees fall sideways so it landed on my leg. “I’m having an even better time than I would have done with Lucy the sheep. Thank you, Sarah Mackey. Thank you for giving up your Thursday afternoon to drink pints with me.”
My chest filled with thick spirals of pleasure. And I let it, because it felt good to be happy.
Eddie went to the loo soon after and I deleted Jenni’s app from my phone. Rebound or not, I hadn’t felt this happy in a man’s company—in anyone’s company, really—in a very long time.
“There’s something in this valley, isn’t there?” Eddie said later. Even he wasn’t sounding sober anymore. The landlord had locked up for the afternoon and told us we were welcome to stay in the garden as long as we wanted.
“The devil’s furnace?” I suggested, fanning my face. “For someone who lives in southern California, I’m unconscionably hot. Where’s the Pacific when you need it? Or a pool. An air conditioner at very least.”
Eddie laughed, angling his head toward me. “Do you have a pool?”
“Of course not! I run a nonprofit!”
“I’m sure some charity executives pay themselves enough to have a pool.”
“Well, not this one. I don’t even own an apartment.”
He looked back up at the hot bar of sky. “Yes, the devil’s furnace is here,” he said thoughtfully. “But there’s something else, don’t you think? Something old, or secretive. It’s always felt to me like a back pocket, this little valley. Somewhere where all sorts of stories and memories are shoved. Like old ticket stubs.”
I couldn’t agree more, I thought. I had more ticket stubs shoved down the back of this valley than I cared to think about. And it didn’t matter how many years I had spent living away from the place: they were still here, every time I returned. Echoes of my sister at every turn of the tiny river Frome; snatches of song in the old beech trees; the feel of her hand in mine. The mirror-stillness of the lake, just like the day we drove back from the hospital. It was all still here. Just out of sight, but never out of mind.
* * *
• • •
We lay there talking for hours, a part of him always touching a part of me. My heart expanding and contracting like hot metal.
Something was going to happen. Something had already happened. We both knew.
At some point Frank the farmer arrived to check his sheep and repair his fence, and gave us some cola and a packet of Cheddar from his shopping. “I owe you,” he’d said, and then winked at Eddie as if I couldn’t see him.
We drank the entire bottle of Coke and ate almost all the cheese. I wondered if Reuben’s new girlfriend—who had apparently taken him on a date to a juice bar—had ever drunk several pints of cider, passed out in a pub garden with a stranger, and then snacked on Coke and Cheddar. I found that I couldn’t have cared less.
I felt like I was at home. Not just with Eddie, but here, in this valley, where I’d grown up. For the first time since I was young, I felt like I was somewhere I belonged.
* * *
• • •
Our secret valley finally cooled as the broiling sun dropped off the side of the world. A twilight fox skeetered across the car park. Small groups of people came and went, the quiet clink of glasses and cutlery muffled by the sluggish rustle of trees. Bright stars stapled an inky sky.
Eddie was holding my hand. We were back at our table. We’d eaten something—lasagna? I barely remember. He was telling me about his mother, and how her depression was beginning to spiral downward again. He was going on holiday in a week with a friend, windsurfing in Spain, and was worried about leaving her, even though she’d told him she would be fine.
“Sounds like you’re very good to her,” I said. He hadn’t replied, but he’d lifted our locked hands up and just kissed one of my knuckles.
And now the pub was closing, for a second time, and even though we hadn’t discussed it, even though I was still technically married, and meant to be suffering deep emotional trauma, even though I had never gone home with a stranger before—especially to a barn in quite literally the middle of nowhere—it was as clear as the cloudless night that I was going home with him.
Using the light of my phone, because his was so cracked the torch no longer functioned, we walked hand in hand along the tangled, silent towpath, past forgotten lock workings and glassy black pools of water.
He let me into his hermit’s barn—which really was in a woodland clearing, flanked by beautiful old horse chestnuts and dimly glowing cow parsley—but there were no elves or satyrs or silken-haired faeries here, just an old army Land Rover and a small patch of darkened lawn, at w
hich Eddie stared suspiciously while he got out his keys. “Steve?” I thought I heard him whisper. I didn’t question him.
He opened the door. “Come in,” he said, and neither of us could quite look at each other, because it was happening, now, and we both knew already that it was bigger than the next few hours.
As we walked through the stilled machines in his workshop, I breathed in the pungent scent of cut wood and imagined Eddie in here: planing, hammering, gluing, sawing. Making beautiful things out of beautiful materials with those large brown hands. I thought of those hands on my skin and felt quite foggy.
We passed through two heavy doors—essential, he told me, for sawdust control—and finally up a flight of stairs to a big, open-plan space, full of old lamps and shadowy beams and gentle creaks. Outside, the trees moved slowly, black against black, and a fine twist of cloud wandered across the headlamp moon.
I got a glass of water in his kitchen and heard him behind me. I stood there for a while, eyes closed as I felt his breath on my bare shoulder. Then I turned round and leaned against the sink as he kissed me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dear You,
Look, I’m married. And I’ve a horrible feeling you already know.
I wasn’t lying when I told you I was single. And I definitely wasn’t lying about how you made me feel.
Reuben and I separated about three months ago. The thing that finished us off was that I couldn’t give him a baby, but I think we’d both known for a very long time that we’d come to the end of the road. It’s a long story—probably beyond the scope of Facebook Messenger—but it was very hard for him.
I was so horribly relieved when he sat me down; I knew what he was going to say. I only wished I’d had the courage to say it myself, years earlier. I sat there opposite him with a phone charger in my hand, weaving the cable round and round my fingers until he took it, and then I cried, because I knew he needed me to.
