Night Music (47 page)

And then he remembered Isabel. She would lose everything. Not just the house but its contents. Her savings. Everything she owned had gone into those walls. His gain would be her loss.

Byron sat on a fallen timber and held the paper. He stared across the lake from his vantage-point. A man who was not empty-handed, after all.

She had walked the last hundred yards through the trees and now stood, some distance before the lane emerged into the clearing, staring at the house, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She had left Kitty and Thierry in the flat with the Cousins, supposedly to get some provisions. But instead of heading towards the bank or the supermarket, she had found herself taking the turn by the piggery and driving down the rutted lane to the sign that still warned her belatedly: ‘
Cave!
’

She had thought she would never look at the house again. But she had had to come. She had to see it. Twice, as she drove through the woods, she suspected she had made a mistake and wanted to turn round. But that was the thing about the track: once you were heading towards the house there was no turning back.

There was an unexpected brightness as she drew closer to the clearing. Bewildered, she realised, with a jolt, that of course there was now no expanse of red brick to blot out the light. She slowed the car and stopped it in the drive near the mass of rubble and timber that had once been her home.

The sight made her shiver, despite the balmy evening. No matter how often she had told herself it had never been their home, that it was just a temporary place to live, the Spanish House had become an extension of her family, their hopes, aspirations, affections and history tied up in its walls. To see it demolished was like seeing themselves brought down, the damage a personal hurt.

Isabel wept, no longer sure why or for whom she was crying, but she felt a great sadness for the house. For the shock of there being nothing where once there had been something. For an ending and a thwarted beginning.

She was not sure how long she stood there. Whether it was the peace of the lake, or the sounds of the woods, her shock and horror began to dissipate, and resignation took their place. A house was just a house, and nowhere was that more exposed than in its demolition. It meant nothing, had no greater significance. She did not have to read some terrible portent into its destruction. It had been a sad, unloved building, just bricks, mortar, wood and glass. Nothing that could not, ultimately, be replaced.

‘You can have it,’ she had told Nicholas Trent, when he called that afternoon. He had rung to see how they were after such a terrible shock. And then he had added, ‘I meant what I said about the condition of the house not being an issue for me—’

‘You can have it at your offering price,’ she interrupted. ‘As long as we sort it out quickly. I just want to move on.’

It was as she recalled this conversation that a dog thrust its cold nose into her hand.

She spun round, and there he was, on a mound of bricks a few feet away, the bruises on his face and arms deepening to a blue-green hue.

She couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked so different, so distant from the man she had left that morning. They had been pulled together by the accident, as if by a magnetic force, then repelled almost immediately afterwards. She wished he had gone before she came. But she was glad, too, that he was there. ‘I needed to see it,’ she said, when her presence seemed to require explanation.

He nodded.

‘It . . . it’s not as bad as I’d thought.’ The absurdity of what she had said made her laugh unexpectedly. ‘I meant – I mean, it’s not frightening any more.’

‘We were lucky,’ he said.

‘In some ways.’ She was unable to hide the bitterness of those words.

She stooped, and went slowly round the edge of the building, pulling out the odd photograph, a hairbrush, trying not to grieve at the sight of their things crushed among the rubble. The fire brigade had tried to gather up anything of value on the day of the collapse. ‘Wouldn’t be too worried about looters, though,’ one of the men had told her. ‘Most people probably don’t even know there’s a house here.’

It was a thoughtless comment. There was no house. She didn’t really care, she told herself. There was nothing much of value that she owned any more. And she wouldn’t care about Byron. She knew now that she could survive alone. It was a whole new start. She glanced back, and saw that he was still looking at her. For a moment he seemed about to speak, but said nothing. She picked her way through the remnants of her old life, mute fury building as his eyes burned into her skin.

Byron watched her wander through the objects scattered on the grass, the way the ill-fitting T-shirt moved against her waist. He noticed the scratches on her arms and fingers, the scars not just of the previous day but of the year that had led up to it. He did not know what to say to her, how to apologise for what he had done. He did not know what to tell her of the things that had happened to him, how one small life could be demolished and resurrected at the same time. Finally, clutching a few things to her chest, she glanced at him and coloured when she saw he was still watching her. ‘I’ve got to get back to the children. I’ll come back some other time.’

He didn’t move.

She stood there, as if waiting for him to say something, and then, with a tight smile, she said, ‘’Bye, then.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

It was as if they were near-strangers, meeting in a street.

‘Isabel,’ he said, his voice unnaturally loud in the still air.

She shielded her eyes with a hand so that she could see him more clearly against the dying rays of the sun.

‘I found these,’ he said. He held out the crumpled papers.

She walked up to him and stopped a few feet away. Without speaking, she took them from him. ‘My scores,’ she said.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘I know how much they mean to you.’

‘You don’t know how much
anything
means to me,’ she said angrily.

He was shocked now by what he saw in her face, the rawness of what he had done to her. There was nothing casual here, he realised. Nothing hidden. In her misery, her fury, he saw what he had felt, what he had hidden from himself for weeks – months. And in a few moments she might be gone from his life for ever. What do I do? he asked himself. I thought I had days to work this out.

‘Good luck in Brancaster,’ she said stiffly, and walked away from him towards her car. His body seemed to constrict with pain – like need. It was so intense, so alien to him, that he found it unbearable. And it was then that he made his decision. ‘Isabel!’ he called. She didn’t turn. ‘Isabel!’

She stopped.

‘Look . . . I was wrong,’ he said.

She tilted her head. A question.

‘You were right.’ He walked towards her, stepping over loose bricks, taking care not to trip on the bunting.

They faced each other. He waited, knowing that what she said now would decide everything. ‘I need you to tell me the truth,’ he said finally. ‘You really believe what you said? That it’s not important who owns what?’

Isabel stared at him. You don’t get it, do you? she thought. I am the realist. I am the one who has had to learn the hard truth of what is important. I would want you if you had nothing for the rest of your life. His beautiful face was suddenly vulnerable, and she remembered how he had called her name when he was trapped in the rubble. She could detect great subtlety in tone, and she had heard the truth in it, even if he hadn’t.
Isabel
, he had said, and the relief in his voice had had nothing to do with where he was.

He lifted his hand, wincing with the effort. She looked at it, then up at him.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘It’s just a
house
, Byron.’

His hand was still raised. She lifted her own, and took his, her slim palm against his broad, strong one. Don’t say no to me again, she told him silently, her face, her eyes, her hand willing him. If I can take this risk, so can you. ‘It’s – just – a –
house
.’

His eyes locked on hers, dark and serious, and she felt weak with fear.

Then: ‘You know what?’ he said, a smile breaking across his features. ‘I think so too.’

He pulled her to him and finally, after the briefest pause, he kissed her. Tentatively at first, and then with growing fervour. At last she could breathe in the scent of his skin, give herself up to the pleasure of being in his arms. He kissed her again, the kiss of a man who owned the world. And Isabel put her arms round his neck, laughing even as she kissed him back, and they stood beside the rubble, wrapped round each other, exulting for some unknown length of time, letting the shadows lengthen as the sheets of music fell from her hand and drifted away, carried on stray breezes into the distance.

The sun had dropped behind the trees when they got back to her car. He would return to work tomorrow. Tonight he would stay with the Delanceys in the little flat above the shop. He would sleep on the sofa. Or downstairs, perhaps. He knew that everything in Nature had a time and place.

It was as they approached the car that he remembered. He removed his arm from Isabel’s shoulders and reached down to pick up a large stone. He pulled two crumpled pieces of paper from his pocket, wrapped them round it and, after a moment’s hesitation, hurled it into the lake.

‘What was that?’ she said, perplexed, as she heard the splash.

He was watching the ripples spread outwards and disappear. ‘Nothing,’ he said, as he dusted off his hands. ‘Nothing at all.’

Epilogue

Matt McCarthy never came back to the Bartons. He and his wife went to live in a place close to her parents. The first we knew of it was a couple of days after the collapse when Anthony called at the shop to tell us they were moving. A for-sale sign went up next to their house and it sold within a week. I guess it’s not surprising: there was never anything wrong with that house.

Anthony is doing a college course, something to do with car mechanics, and I don’t see him much. He was really angry with his folks for a while, but a bit later he told me his dad had had a breakdown and his mum had said there was no point in punishing people for being human. A young family from Suffolk lives in their house now. They have two children whose toys Thierry sometimes finds in the woods. He likes to deliver them back in the early morning, placing them on windowsills and on the fence, so that they think there are fairies in the trees.

Nicholas – we call him Nicholas as we ended up seeing him pretty well every day while the development went up – didn’t want to buy Anthony’s parents’ house, even though Mr Todd, the estate agent, told him he could have made a killing. He used to go a bit odd when anyone mentioned the McCarthys, but then loads of people did for a while. He’s gone off to do other developments in London. The new neighbours are okay. We don’t have much to do with them.

No one was prosecuted for what happened to the Spanish House. The investigators told us it was hard to say what had caused the collapse, given that the house had been neglected for so long. They found traces of woodworm and rot in the timbers, and told us you can’t prosecute someone for shoddy building work. Mum didn’t push it. She said she wanted to leave the whole sorry episode in the past, where it belonged.

She’s doing okay. She goes to London twice a week on the train to play with the orchestra and she no longer grows vegetables. She buys them from the Cousins, and says it gives her great pleasure to do so.

Byron moved out of his mobile home last spring. He lives in a tied cottage that he got with his new job managing an estate a few miles the other side of Long Barton. On Thursdays and Fridays he manages the land round the Spanish House development and he usually stays with us at weekends. I told Mum I didn’t mind if he moved in (it’s not like me and Thierry hadn’t guessed – we’re not stupid) and, besides, I’ll probably go to college next year, but she said they were happy as they were. Anyway, she said, everyone needs a bit of space, and Byron more than most. When he’s not working, he teaches people about trees, how to cut them to make them grow, what plants you can eat, that kind of stuff. He and Thierry are always outside, digging things up or planting.

You can’t see anything of the Spanish House any more. For just over a year now we’ve lived in one of the new houses by the lake, one of eight, all separated by a good stretch of land and a spindly privet hedge that never grew in quite the way the architect’s drawings promised. It’s not a particularly beautiful house. It has four bedrooms and an okay garden, which Thierry and Pepper have pretty well destroyed with their football, and inside there’s nothing much in the way of decoration – no beams, no cornicing. My mum says it’s a ‘bog-standard, low-maintenance, totally ordinary’ kind of house, and when people look at her strangely, wondering why she’s so pleased to say that, when everyone else boasts of square footage and period features, she gets that look in her eye, that look she gets before she starts to laugh.

And then she goes off and does something more interesting.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Karin Leishman and Matthew Souter of the Alberni Quartet, whose musical brilliance and magical home helped inspire this book.

My gratitude as always to my agent Sheila Crowley, as well as Linda Shaughnessy, Teresa Nicholls and Rob Kraitt of APWatt. Thanks to Carolyn Mays for her editing skills and continuing friendship, as well as Lucy Hale, Auriol Bishop, Leni Fostiropolous, Kate Howard, Jamie Hodder-Williams and all the Hodder staff, especially sales.

Thanks for your continuing faith in me. My gratitude also to Hazel Orme – the most meticulous eye in publishing.

Thanks also, in no particular order, to Tony Chapman, Drew Hazell, Barbara Ralph, Fiona Turner, Chris Cheel, Hannah Collins, Jenny Colgan, Cathy Runciman, and all the members of Writersblock.

Grateful acknowledgement to Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce an extract from
Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith
by D. H. Lawrence.