Also by Mary Costello
THE CHINA FACTORY
Academy
Street
Mary Costello
CANONGATE
Edinburgh ∙ London
Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Mary Costello, 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Quotation from ‘Return to Tipasa’ by Albert Camus taken from Selected Essays and Notebooks by Albert Camus, translated by Philip Thody. Reprinted with permission of Editions Gallimard.
‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ Words and Music by Ellington Jordan and Billy Foster Copyright © 1967 (Renewed) by Arc Music Corp.
(BMI) This arrangement Copyright © 2014 by Arc Music Corp. (BMI) Arc Music Corp. Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC for the world excluding Japan and Southeast Asia
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
Quotation from The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter, published by Vintage. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group.
Quotation from ‘Cures for Love’ by Stendhal translated by Gilbert and
Suzanne Sale reprinted by permission of www.merlinpress.co.uk.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 418 5
eISBN 978 1 78211 419 2
For my mother, Annand her sisters, Carmel and Clare
In the depths of the winter I finally learned that there lay in me an unconquerable summer.
Albert Camus
Contents
Part One
1
IT IS EVENING and the window is open a little. There are voices in the hall, footsteps running up and down the stairs, then along the back corridor towards the kitchen. Now and then Tess hears the crunch of gravel outside, the sound of a bell as a bicycle is laid against the wall. Earlier a car drove up the avenue, into the yard, and horses and traps too, the horses whinnying as they were pulled up. She is sitting on the dining-room floor in her good dress and shoes. The sun is streaming in through the tall windows, the light falling on the floor, the sofa, the marble hearth. She holds her face up to feel its warmth.
For two days people have been coming and going and now there is something near. She wishes everyone would go home and let the house be quiet again. The summer is gone. Every day the leaves fall off the trees and blow down the avenue. She thinks of them blowing into the courtyard, past the coach house, under the stone arch. In the morning she had gone out to the orchard and stood inside the high wall. It was cold then. The pear tree stood alone. She walked under the apple trees. She picked up a rotten yellow apple and, when she smelled it, it reminded her of the apple room and the apples laid out on newspapers on the floor, turning yellow.
She lies back on the rug and looks up at the pictures on the wallpaper. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Her mother told her the story. She picks out the colours – dark green, blue, red – and follows the ivy trailing all over the wallpaper, all around Adam and Eve. They are both naked except for a few leaves. Eve has a frightened look on her face. She has just spotted the serpent. A serpent is a snake, her mother said. The apple tree behind Eve is old and bent, like the ones in the orchard.
She feels something in the room. A whishing sound, and a little breeze rushes past her. She sits up, blinks. A blackbird has flown into the room. It flies around and around and she smiles, amazed, and opens her arms for it to come to her. It perches on the top of the china cabinet and watches her with one eye. Then it takes off again and comes to rest on the wooden pelmet above the curtains. It starts to peck at a spot on the wall. She holds her breath. She listens to the tap-tap of its beak, then a faint tearing sound and a little strip of wallpaper comes away and the bird with the little strip like a twig in its beak rises and circles and flies out the window. She looks after it, astonished.
The door opens and the head of her sister Claire appears. ‘Is this where you are? Tess! Come on, hurry on!’
Something is about to happen. Her older sisters Evelyn and Claire are home from boarding school. She loves Claire almost as much as her mother, or Captain the dog. More than she loves Evelyn, or Maeve her other sister, or even the baby. Equal to how she loves Mike Connolly, the workman.
The door opens again, and Claire holds out her hand urgently for Tess to come. There are people standing around the hall, waiting. The front