South of the Lights Read online

  ‘I’ll go back out, get a breath of wind on me,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. I’ll put the kettle on for when you come back.’

  When he had gone Rosie continued to sit at the table without moving. She felt about her the profound silence that Henry had left behind: a silence polluted with dissatisfaction that was almost tangible. Her mind, as it always did after such upheavals, went back twenty-seven years ago, when it had all begun. For most of her pregnancy she and Henry had argued about whether or not the child should be called Sinbad. Rosie had always been adamantly against the idea, but could not think of an alternative name that appealed to Henry. Then, that wintry afternoon, when the baby was three days old, milk-smelling, sucking at her breast, it had come to her: Evans Evans. In her mind’s eye she could see the words in gold paint on the side of a smart navy blue lorry. Evans Evans: it would be a most distinguished name for a contracting firm, an engineering firm – almost any sort of firm. With a name like that her son would start off with an advantage. He would go far. She would see to it he would go far. When Henry came back from work he cradled the baby in his big arms and she had told him her idea. He would be pleased at last, she had thought. He would see the point.

  ‘Never,’ he had said, quietly.

  Rosie had not thought it worth arguing. Normally, throughout their married life, she wanted whatever Henry wanted. This time, her own desire was all that mattered. She did not contemplate changing her mind. She registered the child’s name and told Henry later. He said nothing at the time, just refused ever to call the child anything but Boy. The contention between them became part of their lives. They scarcely acknowledged its existence and continued in their pattern of apparent happiness. Only infrequently, like tonight, did they give vent to their resentment. Such rare occasions, they hardly counted, thought Rosie, and chided herself for having been overcome by the silly rage that had spurred her when she walked through the door. She sighed, got up to put on the kettle. When Henry came back she would apologise: that was part of the ritual pattern. She would say sorry, love, and mean it; hand him his tea and rub briefly at his shoulder with the back of her cupped hand. In anticipation of peace, the horror of the past scene vanished as quickly as it had come. The nasty silence evaporated, too. Rain on windows, hum of steaming kettle, normality returned. Rosie’s smile came back; she tried it out on herself in the small mirror above the fire. She would smile at Henry when he came back, welcome him: and all would be well again for months to come.

  A pale night, the moon a scavenger among shifting clouds. Warm. Evans made his way along the edge of a wheat field to the barn. There was a smell of wet earth and hedgerows, a profoundly English smell that suffuses summer nights after rain. He felt good. All day he had been savouring the thought of the attic room, tempted to tell Brenda but determined not to. Brenda waited for him in the barn. Its dark shape was solid and comfortable against the rags of sky and trees. Evans smiled to himself, trying to remember when it was he had first called the barn the Hilton, and Brenda had laughed.

  She was standing at the door. She held a rug, a Thermos, and a packet of Woodbines. Her shirt was undone almost to the waist, revealing the melon shapes of her breasts. Evans was surprised. Usually, she hid. He had to find her. It was one of their nocturnal games. By the time he had chased her voice in the dark, pretending to miss her whereabouts several times, and then fell upon her, poorly hidden between bales of straw, he could wait no longer. He would take her quickly, that first time. Later, they would make the rug comfortable and start all over again, more slowly.

  ‘Why aren’t you hiding?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Her mouth drooped. Evans remembered.

  ‘Did Wilberforce –?’ He had not thought about Wilberforce, or Elizabeth, all day. Lucky he remembered now.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He must have done it before I got there this morning. Lark gave me a medicine bottle of gin for my elevenses to get over it.’

  ‘You mustn’t think of Elizabeth any more.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Let’s lay out the rug.’ They moved into the barn, climbed three steep steps made by bales of straw to the first flat floor. ‘Shall we stay here, or go on up to the penthouse?’

  ‘Stay here.’

  They spread the rug and lay down. Evans put a hand on Brenda’s denim thigh. His fingers kneaded a seam.

  ‘Your hair smells nice.’

  ‘So it ought.’

  ‘Good thing the rain’s come.’

  ‘Lark’s herb shampoo.’

  ‘Shall I call for room service?’

  Brenda tapped the Thermos.

  ‘After.’ Pause. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Just taking my time. I like looking up into the roof, don’t you? Reckon I know those rafters better than any rafters in the whole bloody world.’

  ‘Evans . . . get on with it.’

  Denim thighs spread like a water diviner’s stick. Free hand rumbling under the shirt, ripping buttons. Breasts warm round swirls of flesh. Nipples hard as corks.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘touch me.’

  ‘Patience.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Patience, I say.’

  ‘Go on, Evans. Hurry.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You know where.’

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Um. Quick. Oh, that bloody light.’

  ‘Like it. Can see you now.’

  Silver moon prying through the great doorway. Dew glisten of flesh. Clothes flung away, limp corpses, aping stillness before this desire. Corn smell, hair smell, dust smell.

  ‘Evans, do everything to me Evans. Anything you like.’ She squelched beneath him. He sucked her. Mouth, throat, nipple, stomach. ‘Go on.’ Decent cloud, suddenly, to frustrate the moon’s prurience. Only the feel, the taste, in darkness. Mutual churning world, making ready. Then the taking. Quiet groans, squeak of straw, arms slippery with sweat, biscuit-smelling rug.

  ‘Oh, Evans.’

  ‘Bren.’

  ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘Christ, I like fucking you, Bren. Christ, I love you.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Mood already sliding out of reach. Compliance gone. She’d be wanting a cigarette any minute. Or maybe she wouldn’t. She went back to being unpredictable, after. After a night without it, he’d like her again at once.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Course.’

  They moved.

  Eventually they lay quite still, listened to the small sounds of mice, the shuffle of a bird in the rafters. They watched the clouds skirmish across the doorway, heard the church clock strike two.

  ‘Lark should try it,’ said Brenda. ‘I keep telling her.’

  ‘She’d be crushed to death, her little bones.’ They both laughed.

  ‘It’s lovely at the Hilton nights like this, isn’t it?’ In mourning for a dead chicken Brenda was always at her most gentle. Evans loved her best after a hen had died.

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind, really, if we never managed to find a real bed. We could go on staying at the Hilton all our lives.’

  She pushed herself up on to one elbow, stretched a hand into the folds of the rug for cigarettes. Evans thought of the attic room, curtains from somewhere at the windows, a bowl of Mrs Browne’s lilac by the bed. He kept his silence.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘One day you’re going to set this place on fire, then we’ll be done for.’

  ‘Promise I won’t.’ Her hip bone was a small sharp hill against the sky. She blew a puff of white smoke that filtered up into the darkness of the rafters. Then lay back close to Evans.

  ‘What do you like best about me, Bren?’ These sort of times, he often dared ask her silly things.

  ‘What you’ve just done to me, ‘course.’

  ‘Don’t you like me for my good looks, my money, my car, my bloody faithfulness?’r />
  Brenda giggled.

  ‘You’re a silly sod.’

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself. Here.’

  ‘Hey, wait. I haven’t finished it.’

  ‘Well, there’s one way to stop you.’ He took the cigarette from her, stubbed it out on the Thermos.

  ‘Waste of money. Want some tea?’

  ‘Tea can wait.’

  ‘You’re a rare one, you are.’

  ‘Kiss me. Go on. I’m going to lie here.’ He pushed her coppery head on to his chest, continued to push it. Here in the barn there was no doubt who was master. Here she’d do anything he wanted, beg for more, be the one to ask. Here she was his, completely.

  His girl. Brenda. Brenda Evans one day. His girl. There was her mouth at last. Funny how she could make the moon writhe like that, the clouds jumble about his eyes, private summer snow falling from the sky . . .

  His girl Brenda.

  The next prospective buyer to see Wroughton House was disturbingly keen. His enthusiasm for every detail filled Augusta with dread. He would change nothing, he said. He liked it all just as it was and would be willing to buy the furniture and pictures as well. The smell of the chimneys would not offend him – seeing his seriousness, Augusta made more of this than usual – because he had lost his sense of smell when he was blown up in the war. In desperation, Augusta was driven to decrying the garden: it was much too big for one man to cope with and no one else in the village was available to come even part-time; it was an endless expense and a perpetual worry. The elms were strangled with disease, he’d have to cut them all down, Augusta said. But the buyer was still undaunted. He waved his hand and mentioned contract gardeners: didn’t matter how far they had to come. It wasn’t till they reached the stable block Augusta discovered his Achilles heel. The old building, of historic interest, was in truth in the last stages of decay, its beams and bricks crumbling, its garage roof unsafe. To renovate it would cost many thousand pounds.

  ‘At the moment,’ said Augusta, ‘the local pop group rehearse every evening in one of the loose boxes. But I told them they can only use it at their own risk. The roof may fall on top of them at any moment.’ She avoided showing the man that particular loose box, whose roof was in fine order, and was rewarded to see the blood drain from his face. It seemed he was not interested in the bother of any kind of renovation. He liked to move into a place that needed no changes whatsoever. Responsibility for the stables would cause him more worry than he was prepared to take on. A pity, for he had so liked the house. He apologised for having taken so much of Augusta’s time and left – as do all disappointed house hunters – very quickly.

  The danger temporarily over once again, a little more time in hand, Augusta wondered where to glut her pleasure. She decided to go up to Evans’s room in the attic, which she was preparing with much energy. To do something positive again, for someone else, had filled the last few days with great delight. She had found curtains, more rugs for the floor, a table and two armchairs. She had polished, dusted and swept, given a coat of white paint to the small fireplace and window sills. Evans had returned on a couple of occasions. He had stood about awkwardly, wondering what he could do to help, and had seemed relieved to find Augusta organising it all with such efficiency. She had made up the bed yesterday, and promised it would all be finished by the weekend. Now she fetched a pile of things she had collected from all parts of the house with which to finally bring the room alive: books, pictures, ashtrays, mugs and candles, bowls of cowslips. She busied about trying out the things in different places, and at last there was nothing further left to do. She sat in one of the armchairs, creaky but comfortable and looked about her.

  Hugh would have been pleased, could he see the room now. He had always regretted they had not been able to finish the attics, and rarely visited them. She had told him about the transformation on the telephone. He had tried not to sound interested, and had asked if all the effort wasn’t a bit silly for so short a time? Augusta had assured him it was most sensible, quite apart from being nice for Evans, and Hugh had said, ‘Well, you’ll do whatever you want, as usual.’ ‘I can’t be as foolish as you say I am,’ she had replied, and put down the telephone. Their conversations always seemed to end on a fatuous level, these days. It was no good on the telephone. If only Hugh would come down, just for one day. They could talk properly, then. But he refused. He said there was no more talking to be done.

  Perhaps he was right. Going round in circles was merely destructive. There was nothing new to add. She had repeated so many times that she knew it to be almost entirely her fault, this catastrophe, and asked to be forgiven and to be granted one more chance. He had equally repeated that he forgave her: of course he forgave her, but she had killed something within him (and it was not the first time she had killed the thing she loved, remember) that could never be resuscitated. A substitute arrangement would be no good. He would rather go. And so he had gone.

  Oh, Hugh, thought Augusta. What have I done?

  This was their house. Other people haunted it, slightly, but she could scarcely remember them. In this very room, one chilly afternoon, she had spent an hour with a lover, for whom she cared nothing, uncomfortable on the bare prickly mattress. Hugh had never found out, but it had been a mistake. When it was over she was glad the man had gone quickly, leaving the house alone for her and Hugh again. A sentimental old film on television, that particular evening, she remembered; she had cried at the end, using it as a front to her terrible deception, the thing that in truth was the cause of her crying.

  Now there was no possibility of more years together. She had destroyed all that and had to accept the consequences. While despising self-pity, and indeed never allowing herself to indulge in it, Augusta accepted the fact that regret was something she would have to live for the rest of her life. She reflected that regret is an indestructible weed that can exist among fine emotions; not a killer, just a strangler that can exhaust its victim.

  She looked at her watch: four o’clock. Always the worst time of day, for her. Since Hugh had gone, Augusta was tempted to sleep much more in the daytime. She half-relished this easy way to traverse the hours, but at the same time cursed herself for losing precious time in the house. Now, faced with the long evening, she was suddenly depressed by the thought of the ashes in the fire downstairs. Conscious of her guilt, she went to the bed she had caringly prepared for Evans and Brenda. She lay down on the quilted cover, and slept there till next morning.

  Henry Evans stood at his front door, looked at the sky above the elms, and made his judgement. It wasn’t going to rain. He pulled the door shut behind him, buttoned up his jacket, and started off down the road.

  Rows always released in him a new silence, and after the little upheaval last night, though all of course was calm now, he did not see fit to tell Rosie where he was going. He walked fast, just in case she should shout after him, striding widely over the puddles rather than skirting them, to help release the stiffness in his legs that had come from a morning of sitting in his chair. He enjoyed the sound of his own footsteps on the wet road, the wind against his face, the bright green of the hedgerows. Mackay lived a mile outside the village, in a pre-war bungalow. He and Evans had been to school together. A wiry little sandy-haired thing he was, then: not up to much as far as books went, but a good fighter. Henry could remember being flayed by Mackay’s inky fists in the playground one day, thoroughly beaten. The cause for the row he could not recall, but in the end Mackay had passed his handkerchief for Henry to wipe his bloody lip, and they had become friends. Mackay had been a pilot in the war, but returned to the village; one of the few from their schooldays to do so. Unmarried, he kept to himself, making annual appearances at local horticultural shows, where he consistently won all the big prizes for vegetables. He and Henry had little in common these days, and never intruded upon their sparse relationship by making plans to meet. But Henry counted Mackay among his friends. On rare occasions when they ran into each other in the Sta
r, where Mackay celebrated his victories, they exchanged the odd word, shorthand acknowledgement of days past spent blowing robins’ eggs and poaching pheasants in the bluebell woods.

  Henry pictured Mackay’s surprise. He would not, he knew, be asked into the house. Mackay was not an inhospitable man – it simply never occurred to him anyone would care to pass through his front door. As on the only other two occasions Henry had come to visit him, they would doubtless stand one each side of the wrought iron gate at the end of the front path.

  Mackay’s bungalow stood close to the road. Behind it rose an impressive amount of greenhouses. In front, the small patch of ground that divided it from the road, which most proud gardeners would have crammed with flowers, was completely cemented over. Not a blade of grass, not a ruffle of aubretia to soften the back-yard appearance. Only a miniature windmill, broken arms whirling in the wind, and a single stone gnome hunched over his fishing line, were rooted in the hard ground. Henry always wondered why Mackay, whose pleasure in life was to care for prize vegetables in the soft earth at the back of his house, should create such bleakness in the front. He could only conclude that the contrast was the thing that appealed to Mackay. Dead ground in one place, young shoots in another – perhaps Mackay had intended a constant surprise for himself.

  His face was at the window. Henry stopped at the road side of the gate, not presuming to enter the cement territory. Mackay hurried out lest his friend should do so. His boots made an urban clatter in his garden. He was bent, old-looking, soil engrained in his hands, black nails.

  ‘There, Evans, I was just giving myself a cup of tea.’

  ‘Hope I’m not at an inconvenient time?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. I’m my own master, master of my own hours.’ They looked at each other. Henry had imagined the encounter taking place on a sunny day. This greyness, all his rehearsed words seemed to have fled.