I thought it was a mistake when his torch dipped and the corner of the curtain was suddenly alight. I opened my mouth to cry out, to warn Roland, to call Tal by name, though he was black-faced and muffled as a Mason and his name lost to him. But there was a strong hand on my mouth and the warm breath of a stranger at my ear and my body was pressed to the ground with a man’s weight. I watched the curtains flare into bright colour, and then the frame itself, a winter tree bursting in an instant into blossom. And the stink was of apple logs burning on a winter fire.
But the smoke hadn’t yet reached me from Roland’s floating bed. It was the stranger’s breath I smelt. Not quite a stranger, then. It was the same stink that lingers on the backstairs, that drifts in the upper passage where the half staircase leads up to the red room and the turret. Sometimes I hear his footsteps. The boards creak and I turn to the wall, because the backstairs are for the Reader to come and go unseen. I have never been in the turret, though I leave food outside the door when I am told and gather empty dishes. This is what I know of the Reader – his quick tread, a glimpse of him in the shadows, the food eaten or not eaten. And the smell, like wood smoke and flowers together.
His name is Brendan. That’s what the older villagers call him who knew him before he was the Reader, when there was another Reader. I’m afraid of a flogging, but I’m more afraid of Brendan. He knows what I did. It was dark, but he must have known me. He put his hand over my mouth, and his mouth to my ear, and he pressed me into the bracken.
The bed was a guttering candle before Roland tore through the blackened rags to leap into the water. I heard the grunt as the Reader pulled himself off me, and the sound of his heavy tread in the bracken. The Masons, the three of them I knew as neighbours, waded into the river to pull Roland to the bank. Then they offered him naked to the moon. I saw in that moment, frightened though I was, that the Masons had put him to sleep as an infant, but he had leapt from his burning bed as a man, a man like Rochester who survived the flames when his mad wife set fire to his bed while he slept.
Then the cart was gone, taking Roland with it, and the Masons and the Reader.
Jason
Abigail’s here with mashed potato in a bowl, onion and bacon chopped up in it, and an egg custard. It’s the first time she’s come with food. I knew they’d been cooking. The smell reminded me of hunger. She tells me she put the bacon through the mincer so I wouldn’t have to chew it. The old mincer you picked up at a local flea market – worth more now than a warehouse full of hi-tech food processors. When it comes to it I can’t eat much, but Abigail’s pleased with me. She seems to want me to live. She says we should eat the bacon while we’ve got it. She found it in the freezer. The electrics came and went for a while, she tells me, then just went. But it’s cool in the basement so there’s a lot hasn’t spoiled yet. She wipes my chin where I’ve dribbled. Then she wrings out the flannel and puts it cold to my face. I smell the onion on her hands. She has a bosom you could drown in. All wrapped up in a cotton dress buttoned to the neck, but comfortably there. A strong face that you think doesn’t do emotion, until you learn to read it. She wears a headscarf, three corners gathered in a knot at the back of her head.
She asks me if the house is really mine and how long I’ve had it.
‘Nine years,’ I tell her, and find I can talk. ‘I bought it after the 08 crash. Not because it was a bargain – I would have paid a lot more for it – but because the owner was up to his neck and couldn’t say no.’
I don’t know why I tell her this. Because it’s my story, I suppose, even though every part of it has lost its meaning.
‘You really wanted it, then,’ she says.
‘Always.’
‘That’s a long time, always.’
She offers me some custard, moving the teaspoon towards me. I open my mouth and it slides cool and sweet on my tongue.
I ask her why they brought me here, to the turret, to the highest bedroom in the house.
‘Because you said we must.’
‘I did?’
‘You kept growling and saying Up! In the hall and on every landing. Up! Up!’ She laughs remembering, and covers her mouth, but not before I see how her smile lights up her face.
It was because of you, Caroline, I wanted to be here – in the bedroom you liked best, on its own little landing across from its own bathroom. OK, you said, a houseful of people, friends, visitors, five children, whatever, but at night they’ll all be elsewhere, somewhere below us, and this will be our haven, our retreat.
There’s a noise like music. I open my eyes and I’m alone. I didn’t see Abigail go, so I must have slept. I think it’s the radio, but are there are no radios. I sit up, put my feet on the floor and wait for the dizziness to pass. I get myself to the window.
And here’s our view. I’ve dreamt of it, longed to see it, felt I might never see it again. More than our view – our place. Lawn as big as a field. The gravel drive running down towards the road. We used to be careful, remember Caro, turning out of our drive, or crossing on foot into the lane to stroll over the bridge into the village, in case some tanked up yokel chose that moment to put his foot down. What chance of that now? The road’s dead. The river has all the life now, obscured by trees but winking where the sunlight catches it.
I look to the right, westward, and there’s our orchard skirting the lawn, and beyond that the moorland road cutting back to the north and out of sight. The other way, to the east, the old church stands as it has for centuries in its graveyard on the riverbank among yew trees and willows and the straggling edge of woodland. On our side of the road, the meadow, where I see now there are cows grazing and, just visible from here, the High Wood – our own little piece of ancient forest – and somewhere in among all those trees the fence that marks the eastward edge of what’s ours. What’s mine. What might be anybody’s now, I suppose.
The music comes again. There’s a horse-drawn cart passing the church into the sunlight. It moves along the road, flashing between trees, and turns in at our gate. A pole rises from each corner to support a green and yellow awning, which flaps in the wind. I hear the wheels of the cart on the gravel drive. The musician is sitting on the edge, leaning on one of the poles. It’s a clarinet he’s playing and he sways it about, lifting it for the high wailing notes. A monkey swings from the awning. There are other animals roped to the back of the cart – two horses, a donkey and some goats. The cart is stacked with cardboard boxes. The woman driving has a straggle of blond hair and wears riding boots and jodhpurs. Hard to gauge anyone’s height from this angle, but the man waddling behind with the goats looks peculiarly squat.
They pull up fifty yards short of the house. The musician lowers the clarinet and shouts something. I don’t catch it at first. Then I do. ‘Living or dead?’ And he plays another flourish. He’s been raising his head, turning from side to side to view the windows. Now he looks towards the front door and raises his arms in what might be a wave. Beside him, the woman drops the reins and raises both hands. ‘We mean no harm’ she says, ‘What’s happening here?’ Down out of sight, Abigail must be pointing the shotgun.
Living, breathing people. It’s good, right? There aren’t many of us. I get a sick feeling, even so.
Now they’ve made contact, the voices are quieter. The woman’s talking. She lowers her hands and climbs down. The musician too springs down on to the gravel. What right has he got to be so smiley? Where’s he been? Hasn’t he heard?