‘I’ll monitor progress and supply strong drink when required. When I’m not working I’ll stay if and when Miranda lets me.’
Colin was a theatre set designer. Mostly he worked in London, but sometimes a job took him to Italy or New York. Unlike the others he was not planning to move to Mead for good. Miranda leaned over and covered his hand with hers.
‘There are nine bedrooms in this house. Be here with us as much as you can,’ she implored.
Colin needed to be with somebody, after everything he had been through. They all thought that, not just Miranda. And if not with them, then whom?
‘Thanks, Miranda. Here I am.’
Selwyn had fidgeted and twitched through all the talking. Now he tipped back half a glass of red wine and jumped to his feet.
‘Sitting for hours makes my back ache. Where’s the music, Mirry?’
‘Next door.’
He bounded through a set of double doors, dragging the white loops of earphones and a black iPod out of his pocket. Ten seconds later music crashed out of the speakers.
‘C’mon, let’s dance,’ Selwyn hollered.
They groaned, but left their seats. It was ‘Baba O’Reilly’.
Selwyn kicked back a rug to expose dusty oak floorboards. They launched into the dance, laughing and kicking out their arms and legs and swinging their buttocks, without the embarrassed scorn of the Knight boys or Selwyn and Polly’s son and twin daughters to inhibit them. The Who were succeeded by Pink Floyd.
‘Haven’t you heard of the Arctic Monkeys, Selwyn?’ Amos shouted.
‘No, and neither have you.’
Katherine, flushed and beaming, was jiving with Colin. As always Amos missed every beat but made up for it with general enthusiasm.
Watching the dancing, her nervous anticipation melted into delight at the success of the first evening, Miranda noticed that there was no wine left on the table. She thought of the remaining bottles of Bollinger in the fridge in the pantry and slipped out into the hall to collect one or two of them. A narrow passage behind the stairs, lined with coats and cluttered with wellingtons, provided a short cut directly to the pantry. She didn’t need to switch on the lights, she knew every creak underfoot and every draught on her cheek, so she swore softly when her ankle connected sharply with a suitcase that Amos had brought in and left there. As she stopped to let the pain subside there was a rustle and a darker shape moved against the darkness.
It was Selwyn. She knew the scent of him before he reached for her, before his lips touched her ear.
‘You are beautiful, Barb. You’re so fucking gorgeous tonight, I don’t know where to put myself.’
‘And you’re pissed, Sel.’
‘No, I’m not.’
Even though it was pitch dark Miranda could see the lines of his profile. Through the muffle of waxed jackets and tweed caps she could hear pairs of feet thudding to the beat.
‘You didn’t always think I was gorgeous.’
There was a ripple of amusement in her voice.
‘Oceans of water have flowed under more bridges than there are in Venice, since those days,’ he protested.
He kissed her and she responded with a sharp intake of breath that seemed to catch in his throat.
‘Stop it,’ Miranda breathed, but they still hung together. He ran his fingers over her throat, down to the open buttons of her top.
She did move then, forcing herself to duck under his arm and skip away to the kitchen. He followed her, into the bright lights and the debris of cooking.
‘Take a couple of those bottles through for me?’
‘Amos has had quite enough already.’
‘So have you,’ she countered.
In the drawing room they were still dancing. Miranda was relieved that no one had missed them, even though all that had happened was a kiss exchanged by friends at the end of a long evening.
Everyone is asleep.
I could just hear the low rumble of Amos talking to Katherine as they undressed, but that stopped a while ago. Selwyn and Polly will be under the bedcovers, oblivious too. I imagine them spooned together, breathing in unison, Selwyn’s dark face crumpled up against her dimpled shoulder.
Amos will be wearing pyjamas, Katherine a nightie, but Polly and Sel will sleep naked. I remember what that felt like, the safety of interlocked bodies, the balm of skin against skin.
None of my business.
I hope Colin is sleeping too. He looks brittle with illness and exhaustion. Maybe Mead will soothe him, if he will allow it to.
These thoughts dance a gavotte around the other. How long since I was kissed, like Selwyn kissed me tonight?
A long, long time.
The lingering heat of that kiss makes me restless.
I cross the room, lean on the windowsill and gaze out. The moon has gone but over the crowns of oak and beech I can see stars. Tomorrow will be another warm day.
The house settles around me. No – around us.
As my mother encouraged me to do, I reckon up my blessings. This is what I have.
Mead, my husband’s house, now mine. I love it as if it were a living thing, even its dilapidation, multiplying outbreaks of decay, creeping damp and splintering bones.
Now friends have arrived bringing our cargo of history, jokes, secrets. Beyond price. A future will unfold here on these acres of Jake’s, shared by people he loved. We have different, complicated reasons, each of us, for investing ourselves and our hopes in Mead for this new beginning, but I believe the outcome will be shared happiness, and security, for all of us. Why not? Age at least brings the benefits of wisdom, mutual tolerance, which we did not possess when we were nineteen, for all our beauty and optimism.
But I’m getting sentimental.
That’s new, as is the realization that I can’t drink the way I used to.
The two things are, of course, quite closely connected.
My feet are as cold as ice.
I wish my bed were not empty.
Rain came sweeping across from the North Sea, borne on flat-bottomed bolsters of cloud that released a steady grey downpour as they slid over the land.
Miranda was down at the site with Amos, who was marching up and down in his wellingtons, waving his arms and chopping the air with his hands as he fumed about delays to his project.
The foundations of his house-to-be were now marked out across the churned-up meadow with pegs and tape, and as their boots slithered in the mud he reminded her of exactly where the terraces would be, where and how huge windows would slide up and down, and the ingenious way that doors would fold out onto the land.
She was as stirred and excited by the prospect as Amos himself. Almost anywhere on earth this building would be a thrilling expression of modernity, and she loved the idea of it being set right here against the old grey bones of Mead.
Amos never tired of telling anyone who would listen about his systems for storing heat and generating energy, the layers of insulation that would reduce thermal loss almost to zero, the waste water recycling technology, all the other innovations that he had planned with such glee, with a rich man’s