‘It needs work,’ Rory said. ‘That’s all. It’s not been touched since my grandmother died. That’s the best part of three years. And I’m pretty sure she never did anything to it towards the end of her life.’
‘And it’s yours?’
‘Mine and Frank’s. It was willed to us both. But when was the last time anybody saw big brother…?’
She shrugged, as if she couldn’t remember, though she remembered very well. A week before the wedding.
‘Someone said he spent a few days here last summer. Rutting away, no doubt. Then he was off again. He’s got no interest in property.’
‘But suppose we move in, and then he comes back; wants what’s his?’
‘I’ll buy him out. I’ll get a loan from the bank and buy him out. He’s always hard up for cash.’
She nodded, but looked less than persuaded.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, going to where she was standing and wrapping his arms around her. ‘The place is ours, doll. We can paint it and pamper it and make it like Heaven.’
He scanned her face. Sometimes – particularly when doubt moved her as it did now – her beauty came close to frightening him.
‘Trust me,’ he said.
‘I do.’
‘All right then. What say we start moving in on Sunday?’
2
Sunday.
It was still the Lord’s Day up this end of the city. Even if the owners of these well-dressed houses and well-pressed children were no longer believers, they still observed the Sabbath. A few curtains were twitched aside when Lewton’s van drew up, and the unloading began; some curious neighbours even sauntered past the house once or twice, on the pretext of walking the hounds; but nobody spoke to the new arrivals, much less offered a hand with the furniture. Sunday was not a day to break sweat.
Julia looked after the unpacking, while Rory organized the unloading of the van, with Lewton and Mad Bob providing the extra muscle. It took four round trips to transfer the bulk of the stuff from Alexandra Road, and at the end of the day there was still a good deal of bric-a-brac left behind, to be collected at a later point.
About two in the afternoon, Kirsty turned up on the doorstep.
‘Came to see if I could give you a hand,’ she said, with a tone of vague apology in her voice.
‘Well, you’d better come in,’ Julia said. She went back into the front room, which was a battlefield in which only chaos was winning, and quietly cursed Rory. Inviting the lost soul round to offer her services was his doing, no doubt of it. She would be more of a hindrance than a help; her dreamy, perpetually defeated manner set Julia’s teeth on edge.
‘What can I do?’ Kirsty asked. ‘Rory said – ‘
‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘I’m sure he did.’
‘Where is he? Rory, I mean.’
‘Gone back for another van-load, to add to the misery.’
‘Oh.’
Julia softened her expression. ‘You know it’s very sweet of you,’ she said, ‘to come round like this, but I don’t think there’s much you can do just at the moment.’
Kirsty flushed slightly. Dreamy she was; but not stupid.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Are you sure? Can’t…I mean, maybe I could make a cup of coffee for you?’
‘Coffee,’ said Julia. The thought of it made her realize just how parched her throat had become. ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘That’s not a bad idea.’
The coffee-making was not without its minor traumas. No task Kirsty undertook was ever entirely simple. She stood in the kitchen, boiling water in a pan it had taken a quarter of an hour to find, thinking that maybe she shouldn’t have come after all. Julia always looked at her so strangely, as if faintly baffled by the fact she hadn’t been smothered at birth. No matter. Rory had asked her to come, hadn’t he? And that was invitation enough. She would not have turned down the chance of his smile for a hundred Julias.
The van arrived twenty-five minutes later; minutes in which the women had twice attempted, and twice failed, to get a conversation simmering. They had little in common: Julia the sweet, the beautiful, the winner of glances and kisses, and Kirsty the girl with the pale handshake, whose eyes were only ever as bright as Julia’s before or after tears. She had long ago decided that life was unfair. But why, when she’d accepted that bitter truth, did circumstance insist on rubbing her face in it?
She surreptitiously watched Julia as she worked, and it seemed to Kirsty that the woman was incapable of ugliness. Every gesture – a stray hair brushed from the eyes with the back of the hand, dust blown from a favourite cup – all were infused with such effortless grace. Seeing it, she understood Rory’s dog-like adulation; and understanding it, despaired afresh.
He came in, at last, squinting and sweaty. The afternoon sun was fierce. He grinned at her, parading the ragged line of his front teeth that she had first found so irresistible.
‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said.
‘Happy to help –’ she replied, but he had already looked away: at Julia.
‘How’s it going?’
‘I’m losing my mind,’ she told him.
‘Well now you can rest from your labours,’ he said. ‘We brought the bed this trip.’ He gave her a conspiratorial wink, but she didn’t respond.
‘Can I help with unloading?’ Kirsty offered.
‘Lewton and M.B. are doing it,’ came Rory’s reply.
‘Oh.’
‘But I’d give an arm and a leg for a cup of tea.’
‘We haven’t found the tea,’ Julia told him.
‘Oh. Maybe a coffee, then?’
‘Right,’ said Kirsty. ‘And for the other two?’
‘They’d kill for a cup.’
Kirsty went back to the kitchen, filled the small pan to near brimming, and set it back on the stove. From the hallway she heard Rory supervising the next unloading.
It was the bed; the bridal bed. Though she tried very hard to keep the thought of his embracing Julia out of her mind, she could not. As she stared into the water, and it simmered and steamed and finally boiled, the same painful images of their pleasure came back and back.
3
While the trio were away, gathering the fourth and final load of the day, Julia lost her temper with the unpacking. It was a disaster, she said; everything had been parcelled up and put into the tea chests in the wrong order. She was having to disinter perfectly useless items to get access to the bare necessities.
Kirsty kept her silence, and her place in the kitchen, washing the soiled cups.
Cursing louder, Julia left the chaos and went out for a cigarette on the front step. She leaned against the open door, and breathed the pollen-gilded air. Already, though it was only the 21st of August, the afternoon was tinged with a smoky scent that heralded autumn.
She had lost track of how fast the day had gone, for as she stood there a bell began to ring for Evensong: the run of chimes rising and falling in lazy waves. The sound was reassuring. It made her think of her childhood, though not – that she could remember – of any particular