Secrets (5 page)

Joe decides the best option, for both their sakes, is to keep the conversation anodyne. He sees he has the very opportunity, spread out in all its faded Victorian splendour in front of them. This woman doesn't know Saltburn-by-the-Sea but he does. In a few days he'll be out of the country. He does need to go through his dates with Tess but OK, it can wait until Emmeline's nap. He also needs to go the bank and Wolf is straining for a good blast on the beach. En route however, there is plenty to politely point out – landmarks for Tess, an opportunity for Joe to de-personalize the conversation.

Tess has now caught up with him. ‘These buildings are stunning,’ she says, ‘they'd cost a fortune in London.’

‘Good old Henry Pease,’ Joe says. ‘He was the Victorian gentleman who came for a walk, sat on the hillside over there overlooking Old Saltburn's single row of cottages and the Ship Inn and had a vision for the town and formal gardens you now see.’

‘Why isn't it called Pea-on-Sea then!’

‘
Pease
,’ Joe repeats but he has to smile. ‘Actually, Saltburn comes from the Anglo-Saxon
Sealt Burna
, or salty stream, on account of all the alum in the area. But moving on a few centuries – Henry Pease built the place with George Dickenson of Darlington in the 1860s. They constructed a model of homogeneity – uniform roof lines in slate, white firebricks exclusively from Pease's own brickworks, and no fences.’

‘You have a fence,’ Tess says. ‘
You
have a tall wall with a fence on top all the way around.’

‘The house is from a later period,’ Joe says, thinking she is an argumentative thing. ‘Anyway, twenty years later the town was done – the station complex, the Valley Gardens you've just passed, the chapel, the pier and the cliff lift which back then was a glorified hoist. Best of all the Zetland Hotel – see, over there? Isn't it magnificent? It's flats now – but it was the world's first railway hotel and very grand it was too, with its own private platform. Pease's father built the Stockton and Darlington Railway – the first passenger railway in the world.’

‘It's a very good-looking town,’ Tess says, thinking how her own family had so little to be proud of.

‘That's partly because when Pease died in 1881, the Saltburn Improvement Company was disbanded and the town's driving force was gone – so no new features were added and the resort has remained a sort of time capsule, a perfectly preserved Early Victorian seaside town.’

‘Like a living museum.’

‘You should see it in August during the festival – everyone dresses in period costume. Well, not everyone.’

‘Not you.’

‘No, Tess – not me.’

‘I'd like to.’

‘Don fancy dress?’

‘No – see it in the summer!’

‘You should be here over Christmas – there's a tradition of running into the sea.’

‘Oh. Do you do that?’

‘I have been known to.’ He looks at her. She seems concerned. ‘It's not obligatory.’

‘It's just I don't really like beaches all that much.’

Joe continues to look at her; again she is irritating yet intriguing in equal doses. What an odd thing to say – not least on account of her impromptu beeline for Saltburn. ‘Why ever not? And why come here, then?’

‘You said
sea views
.’ And once again, she's implying that Joe is guilty of misrepresentation.

‘Who doesn't like beaches?’ Joe says because the beach is clearly in view now. The tide is out and the view is stunning: the sand is long, wide and glossy and the North Sea is now licked with silver and scattered with diamonds while the pier marches on its cast-iron trestles almost 700 feet out.

‘Me,’ Tess says. ‘
I
don't like beaches.’

Two surfers ride the waves, weaving in around each other like shuttles on a loom. Wolf is at the shoreline already, barking at them but apparently loath to get his paws wet. Joe passes a tennis ball from hand to hand. ‘Coming?’

Tess looks at the beach cursorily. ‘I think I'll stick to dry land. I think I'll explore the town.’

Joe shrugs. ‘I'm going to the bank after I've tired out Wolf. I'll see you back at the house. Can you find your way? It's straight up there. Shit – you don't have keys. Here, take mine.’

‘Say you're back before me?’

‘I won't be. You'll know town inside out in the time it'll take me to walk half the beach. Pick up some milk, would you?’

There's a plunge to her gut as she realizes she has brought no money. Rice cakes, a beaker, baby wipes, nappies, a spare hat, two cardboard books and a squeaky toy. But no money.

‘I left my purse at home,’ she calls after Joe who is already tormenting Wolf by feigning to throw the ball. The wind, though, snatches her words away. ‘Joe!’ He turns and cups a hand to his ear. She pulls the empty pockets of her jacket inside out and gives a mortified shrug. He jogs across the beach back to her, Wolf bounding and lurching and leaping at his arm in desperation for the ball which Joe holds aloft like the Olympic flame.

‘I left my purse at home,’ Tess says when he's close. ‘Sorry.’

She looks acutely embarrassed. Joe throws the ball for Wolf and passes Tess a pound coin and says, don't spend it all on sweets. As he heads back for the shore, he recalls how she said she'd left her money
at home
. He liked that. Hers are undeniably a rather odd pair of hands – this manicurist with the chipped nails from London – but Joe senses they are a safe pair and that in them, his house and all that is in it will be fine. He can go to France on Wednesday without a backward glance. In fact, he might even head off early. Perhaps tomorrow. See if Nathalie is around.

Chapter Four

Tess kept the pound coin tightly in her hand though it made pushing the buggy awkward. Though Joe had mentioned the pay, he hadn't told her when she'd be paid, but she expected it would be in arrears. Which meant no income for a month. Which meant she really was going to have to phone her sister at some point soon. But at that moment, she let the practicalities drift out to sea and she turned her undivided attention inland, to the new town before her. Tess had been in London for a decade, gradually becoming inured to the challenges of the big city; learning not to be intimidated by its scale or bothered by her anonymity. However, on her first full day away from London, Tess found the smallness of Saltburn quite startling. The pavements felt narrower. The cars appeared to move slower. It all felt quiet and empty. There was a total absence of the familiar coffee chains and though she had often cursed their proliferation in London, it made Saltburn seem half asleep. Wake up and smell the coffee, she felt like calling out. But actually she felt a little shy and too conspicuous to cast her gaze too far afield, so all she spied in her first glances was a newsagent, a grocers, an off-licence, butcher, baker, gift shop and chemist. There also appeared to be a startling lack of the gaudy homogeneity to which she'd become accustomed in London. As a child, Tess had visited Bekonscot Model Village and now she felt she was walking around a life-size version. On that first morning, Saltburn seemed quaint and odd in equal doses. However, people were undoubtedly friendly as she passed by, giving her a nod or offering her a quick word, counteracting her private misgivings of blimey, is this it? She wouldn't phone her sister, not today. Let today be full of promise.

She'd seen Joe and Wolf still bounding about the beach so she made haste to be the first one home. There, she paused at the gate and drank in the sight of the house which after the arduous slog uphill from town, had a similar effect to downing a long cool drink. Despite the general sharp chill in the air, she'd needed to take off her coat and bundle it into the hood of the buggy. At a standstill, she could feel the race of her heart and she was surprised at her lack of fitness.

Odd how, apart from its size, she'd noted very little about the building on arriving the previous day. Now, she had the time to. Compared to the creamy white bricks of Pease's buildings in town, the house, a large Victorian villa, was constructed with bricks which had a rose tint to them. Even on a cold March day, they appeared to soak in the sun and radiate its warmth. Decorative arches, some in bas-relief, some indented, broke up the expanse of brickwork between the tops of the windows and the roof. The roof was a mauve slate, its uniformity given interest by the tall chimney stacks of different design and the terracotta pointed crenelations along the ridges which might be to deter birds but could be purely ornamental. The white-framed sash windows were edged in cream stone. There were windows everywhere at all angles – no vista would go unseen from this house. When she had the time and the privacy, Tess would certainly look out from inside from every one of them.

Em was on the cusp of dozing off so Tess pushed the buggy on a tour around the garden – or gardens, for the half acre had been compartmentalized. There were polite lawns at the front, flanking the drive, another large expanse at the back demarcated by a blousy shrubbery and rolling herbaceous borders in something of a straggle. A little path mown through longer meadow grass at the back led to two sheds, one sizeable, one ramshackle. There were specific areas for a compost heap and bonfire site, an overgrown raised vegetable patch where only weeds shot out along the heaped rows. Behind a group of conifers was a plot apparently designated as Wolf's toilet. Well, she'd be asking Joe about fencing that bit off; she couldn't risk Em toddling in that direction. If that wasn't too much for a house-sitter to demand. What a place, though, what a space.

Suddenly, she was clinging onto a tree as if she was teetering on the edge of that great Huntcliff Nab, the majestic cliff which towered above the beach and plunged into the North Sea. The ground felt as if it were moving away from her feet like a conveyor belt in overdrive. Her breath was shorter, her heart racing harder than when she'd just slogged up the hill.

Em, Em, what have I done? Setting out to secure the best life for you? Or have I just run away? Where the hell are we? Where on earth have I brought us? What was I thinking? I didn't stop to think. I never stop to think. Am I running away? Will I be caught? Is this just hide-and-seek – have I gone to ground while kidding myself this is My New Life? These stupid ideas of mine.

When she finally felt able to open her eyes and prise her grip from the tree, she stood still awhile, blinking in the reality of her surroundings in a series of snapshots. The beauty and breadth of the grounds. The majestic poise of the house. The warmth of the bricks. A date stone carved with 1874. She repeated the date out loud quietly, over and over, the sound of the words regulating her breathing. She honed in on another stone plaque over the front door just visible from this angle. She wheeled the buggy over to take a closer look. The lettering was in relief.
RESOLUTION
, it read. Strange name for a house, she thought. And then she thought, it's time for resolutions of my own. It was a bright moment of calm after a storm of turbulent emotions. She placed both palms flat against the bricks. This house, by name alone, had instilled a new sense of purpose in Tess and she didn't feel merely soothed now, she felt bolstered. She returned to the main swathe of garden and parked the buggy in a quiet spot under a tree within sight and earshot of the kitchen windows and went inside to boil the kettle.

She made a cup of tea, more to hold than to drink. And there was Joe again, grinning from the photo on the dresser, yellow hard hat and the bridge in the background. Thank you, she said, thanks for this chance. She turned her gaze outside. She could see that Em was asleep in the buggy, Em was just fine.

‘Here.’

Joe's back.

Tess hadn't heard him come in and her vantage point from the kitchen window precluded seeing the approach to the house.

‘Keys – though as you've probably found out, the doors are rarely locked.’ He reached up for an old toby jug on the top shelf of the dresser, full of keys, and jangled a set. He looked at her quizzically. ‘Or you could keep mine,’ he said, ‘and I'll take this pair.’

It was then Tess realized the keys were still firmly in the clench of her fist as if she had no intention of letting them go. She looked at them. A Chubb and a Yale on a key ring from Brazil spelled with an ‘s’. Like the postmark on the card on the dresser from Giselle.

‘Have you been to Brazil, then?’

‘Yes. Many times.’

‘Have you a bridge there?’

‘Yes.’

Tess wondered why she wanted to say, and have you a Giselle there too? ‘Tea?’ she said instead.

‘Ta.’

‘Resolution.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your home – it's a good name. Different.’

‘Next door is Endeavour.’

‘That's different too. But I prefer Resolution. I like the meaning.’

‘Not that up on British history, then?’

‘What?’

‘
Resolution? Endeavour
? They were the ships James Cook sailed on his voyages of discovery. This is Cook Country – he was born not far from here, just outside Middlesbrough. He sailed from Whitby – just down from here.’

Tess grasped the information. ‘Where did he go to on the
Resolution
? Where did he discover? When was that?’

‘1772. Cook sailed the
Resolution
for three years, disproved the southern continent by sailing round Antarctica and discovered Tonga and the New Hebrides. 1776 was his third and final voyage – off to the North Pacific on the
Resolution
to find the end of the North-West Passage which of course he didn't. But he did sail through the Bering Strait and he did discover Hawaii where, on a return visit, the natives killed him.’

Tess felt shy for her ignorance but she thanked Joe and said that Resolution was a beautiful name for a house.

‘Better than Dun Roamin',’ said Joe who appeared to Tess to be oddly immune to the romance of it all.

She thought about the house, inside and out. ‘All the windows,’ she said. ‘It's like a compass – views from every point.’

‘Well, your maritime analogy is strengthened by the fact that there are mice in the cellar and in a raging storm, the rain finds its way in through the lower windows.’ With that, he let Wolf out into the garden from the boot store off the utility room. Tess realized this must have been the way he'd come in just now. She followed him.

‘Does Wolf always go in that patch – over there? You know, “go”?’

‘Yes, he's very particular.’

‘Could you fence that part off, then?’

Joe looked at her. ‘How about I put a sign up instead. Like in municipal parks – you know, like
Keep off the Grass.
’

‘What –
No Dogs
instead?’

‘I thought more along the lines of
No Children
.’

There was a loaded pause between them.

‘Em can't read,’ Tess said, and her tone harked back to when she first saw Joe's dog. ‘She's only eighteen months.’

‘Wolf can't read,’ Joe said bluntly. ‘
He's
only a dog.’

‘
You
didn't say anything about a dog,’ Tess muttered.

‘Ditto child,’ said Joe. He felt curiously irritated. Not because of the child or the dog or the shit, just because this girl was doing it again. Unnerving him. Maybe it was sharing his space that caused it. Maybe those house-sitters who did the job unseen and not heard, suited him better. ‘I'm going to go to France early – tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Very good,’ she said because then she could have the place to herself.

The chill between them lasted a few moments longer but then Joe watched a whisper of vulnerability cross Tess's face.

‘Tea?’ she said though he hadn't finished his first cup.

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I need to crack on. We'll go through my diary in a while.’

Alone again, Tess looked out to the garden. Wolf was mooching around like a hairy metal-detector, never far from the buggy. Em's little fists were agitating the air around her.

They'll be OK, those two, Tess thought, they'll get along fine. It's not that relevant if Joe and I don't. He won't be here that often.

But she was appalled that her mind's eye had returned to the smatter of dark hair running from his stomach down to his jeans that she'd seen when he had reached up for the jug of keys.

Get your mind off that, she scolded, and fix your eye on your child outside.

And, though she had no reason to glance again at the photo on the dresser, she was helpless not to. It wasn't the hard hat or the bridge or the bare chest, it was the smile. A blend of euphoria and tenderness and utter focus. There had never been a time when someone had smiled at her like that.

Who were you smiling at, Joe? Where is she now?

‘It's a peace offering.’

Tess turns around, mortified. She is stooped over the bath with her bottom in the air and she knows her jeans are not the most flattering at the best of times. From this angle, there's no escaping builder's bum.

How long has he been standing there, holding the bottle of red wine?

‘A peace offering?’

‘I was arsey,’ Joe says, ‘before – about Wolf and the garden and Emmeline.’ He takes his eyes off Tess and focuses on the slippery pinkness and the foam Afro demarcating her daughter.

Tess scoops Em out of the bath and cocoons her in a towel. She sits down on the side of the bath not knowing what to say. ‘Well, that's OK, Joe. I was a bit – demanding. I'm just the house-sitter anyway. Not a house mate.’