Golden Hour
Authors: William Nicholson
THE GOLDEN HOUR
Also by William Nicholson
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life
All the Hopeful Lovers
HOUR
William Nicholson
New York ⢠London
© 2011 by William Nicholson
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ISBN 978-1-62365-241-8
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual personsâliving or deadâevents, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would not be to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
Marcel Proust,
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu
.
The story takes place over seven days in July 2010.
SUNDAY
1
She comes to the front door just behind him, and notices for the first time that the heels of his shoes are worn on the outer side. Funny the things you still don't know about someone, even after a year. No, it's more than a year now. It was a cold spring day when they first kissed, and now it's high summer. The latch of the door drops into the keep behind her with a solid clunk. Late afternoon sunshine warms her bare face, her bare legs. A summer to remember so far, blue skies over yellow fields, no rain for weeks. They say the trees are showing signs of stress.
Down the narrow lane lined with brambles, the blackberries still too small to pick. Andrew striding ahead, his stocky body proceeding with purpose, though she knows the way and he doesn't. Then where the lane meets the road he stops and waits, looking back at her. That ugly gentle face, the shine of his rimless glasses, those comical eyebrows. He can make his eyebrows go up and down independently of each other. She laughed when she first saw the trick, and thought perhaps she could love him. It was the way he kept a straight face while being so foolish.
“I was thinking,” he says.
Maggie raises one hand and looks away, shielding her eyes from the sun. She hears it coming, the way you know the phone will ring before it rings.
I don't want this.
This is the shock. She thought she'd made up her mind. Where has this come from?
“Take a right at the school,” she says. “It's the field behind the school.”
They hear the distant sounds of the village fête in progress. A loud voice shouting indistinct words. The boom of a brass band. They pass a high hedge that conceals a flint-and-brick early-nineteenth-century cottage in which the windows have been replaced. The new windows are double-glazed, single-pane, plastic-framed, illegal.
“See those windows,” she says, pointing through the hedge. “That has to be a listed building. That's a planning violation.”
Andrew looks.
“Ugh!” he says.
“It's like the house has been blinded. It's like it's had its eyes put out.”
This is genuine, she really feels it. Maggie Dutton, conservation officer, champion of oppressed buildings. Who will cry their pain but her?
“Will you report them?” says Andrew.
“Probably not. It's awkward when you live in the village. And it looks like it was done a long time ago.”
Not a true villager, only renting, the prices in Edenfield way too high for her salary. Two salaries combined would be a different matter, of course. In a week's time Andrew starts a new job, in Lewes. He's moving out of his flat in London, moving in with her. So it has been agreed. Arrangements have been made, friends have been told, parents have approved. This is the appropriate next step. And now, for no good reason, outrageously, she doesn't want it.
He's looking at her, smiling, but at the same time he's wrinkling his forehead the way he does, making deep lines between his eyebrows. Why is he smiling?
Because I'm smiling at him. I'm smiling at him because I'm afraid of hurting him. Afraid that if I hurt him too much he'll leave me and then I'll be hurt. Or is that what I want? Mum used to say, “Don't you look at me like a naughty puppy.” And Dad would say, “Go on, give her what she wants. You know she'll get it in the end.” But what happens when you don't know for sure what it is you want?
Dad called me “dainty.” Christ I hated that, it's a cruel word. It means pretty but not to be handled too roughly. Not to be handled much at all.
“So about next weekend,” he says, not receiving the message.
“I can't think about that now,” she says. “Later.”
They head on toward the fête. A mother she doesn't know passes them, trailing two unhappy children. “Well, you can't,” the mother's saying, not looking back. “Whining won't get you anywhere.”
Here's what happens later. We move in together. And later? We get married. And later? We have children. And later? We get old. And later? We die. And that's my life.
Ahead of her the high dome of Mount Caburn and the clean line where the land meets the sky. Maggie loves the Downs. Sometimes she climbs the sheep track to the top and stands face on to the wind watching the cloud shadows sail over the sea, and she feels as if she's escaped time altogether.
I can't think about that now, Andrew. I can't talk about it because how can I tell you that later turns into forever and how can I tell you that suddenly I'm not sure I want to be with you forever? Forever scares me. I can do tomorrow. I can do next week. But ask me for more than that and I don't know what to say to you.
Ashamed of her doubts, she slips her hand through his arm as they enter the school field where the village fête is in full
swing. Then she feels she shouldn't hold his arm, not now. But she doesn't let go because she doesn't want to seem to be rejecting him. Because she is.
It's a lovely fête, small and humble and homemade. A hundred or so local people stand about, stupefied by the heat. Sheep bleat. Dogs bark. Boys shout. The dog show is attracting a crowd, many of them sitting on the straw bales that line the rectangular arena. Owners parade their dogs up and down, competing to win the prize for Dog Most Like Their Owner. One woman in black leggings wears long purple-and-black striped socks. So does her dog. The Wealden Brass Band plays “Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.” The sound of smashing plates punctuates the mellow horns. One pound gets you four balls to throw at the crockery. Little girls race by with painted faces. The sun streams down on fat men in shorts. People line up under the chestnut tree to place their bets on the runners in the sheep race.
Mrs. Jones from the village shop is serving tea and lemonade and lemon drizzle cake.
“You should have heard Billy's speech,” she says. “He got stuck in the middle.”
Billy is Lord Edenfield, formerly of Edenfield Place, a bulky stooping figure accompanied by a stout woman with black hair and a ringing laugh.
“Is that Lady Edenfield?” says Maggie.
“That's her. His housekeeper as was.”
The village scandal, except it's not a scandal at all. Why shouldn't a lord marry a housekeeper?
“You should hear how she bosses him,” says Mrs. Jones. “She's got him where she wants him all right.”
Andrew looks across the field and sees Lady Edenfield's laughing face.
“I expect she makes him happy,” he says.
That's Andrew for you. Always looking on the kind side. Old ladies adore him. Sometimes catching sight of him when he doesn't know she's watching, like when he gets off the train at Lewes station and makes his way down the steps to the car park where she waits, engine running, radio playing, she sees him as others see him, a serious young man with a purposeful air striding toward some meaningful encounter. But then he comes close up and somehow he loses focus. Getting into the car he's already softer, floppier. When he leans across to give her the expected kiss he looks like a teddy bear, which is one of her affectionate names for him, though she's forbidden him to use it about himself. Teddy bears, after all, are cuddly but not sexy. Teddy bears get left behind on the bed in your childhood bedroom when you grow up and leave home.
Maggie scans the crowd. A total stranger, a friendly looking man in a cream jacket by the Catch-a-Rat stand, meets her eyes and smiles.
Did I invite that?
Thoughts clatter through her mind like dominoes falling. If I'm not moving in with Andrew, then we've got no future together. If we've got no future, it's over. If it's over, I'm single again. If I'm single again, I'm looking for a new man.
