Solsbury Hill A Novel (18 page)

“I didn’t.”

She made an effort to avoid hysteria, to pull her feelings down low in her belly.

“That’s kind of hard to believe, given the scene at the coffee shop the day before.”

“I know.”

“That was coincidence.”

“Not coincidence. It was pure accident.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant, what was the distinction. Was she going to tumble into the details of it?

“You met the pixie when, then?”

“We met her at a party. She flirted with me. You didn’t notice it, but that’s where we met her.”

“I didn’t meet her,” she said.

He dropped his head, rightly ashamed.

He went on. “She was at the coffee shop that day and then she was at the bar we were at that night. The guys, lots of them left early, and I stuck around.”

“By accident,” she said.

They looked at each other for a long time. Finally she looked away and said, “Anyway, I’m here now,” she started. The conversation was over. There was nothing new to learn. “You’ve been my best friend forever. It’s something that happens, right? Stuff that happens to people.”

“There you are being kind.”

There was a large empty silence.

“You know, El, I see it. You seem settled in yourself like I’ve never seen you.”

It was impossible not to think of riding on the scarp that morning, at the top with the broken cliffs below. Both their heads of hair a tangle and the chestnut horses in a sticky sweat underneath them. Just that morning.

“It was awful seeing you that way that night,” she said, “and it might have changed things for us in a way we can’t get back from.” She held his eyes and this was all the punishment she would give him. She didn’t blink. Though her eyelids felt weak, she didn’t blink. Her eyes bore into his, and his
held steady. He was capable. He withstood the universe of understanding that bears no explanation, ineffable like love and death, truth and betrayal.

The server announced the crab from Whitby and Eleanor remembered that Vikings once came into Whitby on wild-looking ships from the North Sea.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

He divided the grazing plates. Taking and giving some.

“Tell me something, would you?” Human, he needed to hear it in black and white. “Was it unforgivable?”

She thought for a moment. “No, not unforgivable.”

She had no appetite for eel or crab or macaroni and cheese with ham hocks. “Could I have some water, please?” she asked the waiter and picked at the unusual carrots.

The water came in a cleaned-out milk bottle, fresh and cold. He poured the water for them and they each drank a glass or two, because the food was rich with butter and also salty.

Then she said, “We’ll stay here, right?”

“Here in York?” His mood brightened.

“Just the night, okay?”

Facing him, she knew nothing was simple.

As they ambled about in the narrow streets of the oldest part of town, she spoke in a low voice. “My mother lived here in that big house, when she was little, and back and forth all her life, and she came here for visits, and in all that time she never brought us here, Dad and me, and I’ve never
even wondered about this place. I knew she was from some place and I never went looking for any of it.”

“You were sad for a long time, checked out, in a way. It doesn’t surprise me.”

When he offered her his arm, she slipped her arm through his and they walked through York much the way they walked in SoHo on the weekends. Wandering from one shop to another through the labyrinth of mews and alleys, she let him lead, because he knew how to lead her. He’d led her through so much that was hard in her life, when she couldn’t bear to find her way alone, that even after she’d begun to tread a path of her own, he didn’t know how not to lead her.

After bourbon at a pub, they stepped off the curb to make way for others in the narrow passage. She knew some of this would never change: he would always be Miles Paxton, the boy who’d loved her since they were children.

The boy who’d taken her, one day in the spring when she was seventeen, to Rockaway Beach, where he had invited her to get on a surfboard and ride with him. She’d worried that the awkward length and weight of her would topple them, but he had encouraged her to climb on, and she had surfed all day. In the evening, in front of her house, when he dropped her home, all salty and fresh from a day in the sea and the sun, she had wanted him to kiss her. His hair was thick and his lips were round. He had the smartest eyes she had ever seen, and it was the first time she had wanted to be kissed by anyone.

Ahead on the right there was the light of a pub, and Miles led her, but Eleanor saw a bright light filling the night sky and she pulled him in that direction, down another street and around a sharp corner.

“Excuse me, what is that?” Eleanor asked an old woman in a thick coat and sensible shoes.

“Ah, ’tis th’ Minster. Tha’s not from here? Ye canna miss th’ Minster. Walk toward it,” she said, “anyone can get ye there if ye lose tha sense of it.”

They were now on a wide, busy street with buses and cars that zipped by, people moving with purpose, but they strolled along across the river, stopped to watch a boat pass under the bridge, its flat deck filled with chairs and quiet visitors.

Now she led Miles, and several hundred yards down, just before seven thirty in the evening, their walk ended at the York Minster—a fantastic Gothic building with spires that reached to the heavens—and with their heads tipped back so their throats stretched, they followed the Gothic building all the way around to the south wall, a long stretch of yellow stone in an astounding structure. Lights lit up the building from below. She and Miles followed the sound of people and found them collecting at the west door.

At seven thirty, the Ghost Tour began. The Ghost Trail of York and a delightful storyteller told the thirty people who followed behind tales of ghosts from the Romans and Normans and Stuarts and more. York had grown for two thousand years, he said, it had lived and grown, layer by layer, each
century adding dregs, residue, and half-dead remains of scandals, plagues, murders, and hauntings.

The storyteller showed blurry snapshots of ghosts caught just in the nick of time, in the blink of a spirited camera’s eye: a photo of a woman floating in a white gown, another of a man in top hat and cane alone in the cathedral.

Eleanor wanted to talk to the storyteller, to ask what
he
made of what she thought she’d seen, what she’d imagined. She wanted to know if he believed in seeing phantoms and phantoms that could hold your hand and tell you about things.

“He likes scaring the pants off of kids,” Miles said as they walked away. “Little kids and big kids.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“I’ve no idea. It might be true, but that guy’s a good actor.”

The Guy Fawkes Inn was a dreamy place, and Eleanor was tired enough to sleep for two. Their room was blissfully beautiful with a four-poster bed that was draped in curtains they could pull all the way around and close themselves in. The curtains were lined with raw silk on the inside and on the outside an Italian linen printed with red, cream, and taupe flowers on a chocolate brown background. The place was luxurious. The rolled-rim tub was long and deep. There were white linen sheets, soft from hundreds of washings, and everything had the smell of lavender and lilac.

She stripped down to a T-shirt and underpants, lay close to one side of the bed, and reached her hand back to hold his.
She gazed at the dark wood throughout the place, on the furniture and the beautiful well-waxed floors. The light of the Minster was right outside their window. Lit up like a holiday, the church’s glow filled the room. It had been a long day, they were tired, and she felt him press his spine against hers. All night they slept that way.

Open to the sky where the rails ran through, the train station at York was a modern architect’s dream of cable, wire, and steel.

“You’ll be back soon, right?” he said.

She closed her eyes and kissed him. Urgently, he wrapped his arms around her, held her so close she could hardly breathe with his mouth pressed against hers and her body not yielding.

She pressed her hand against his chest and took one step away. “Listen, I’m not sure what we’re doing. I’ve no idea what I’m doing. Things have changed, you know . . .”

“Sadly, I do know,” he said. Ever optimistic, Miles’ heart was buried under layers of plans, blueprints he had for the future. Like his city, where things moved quickly and much went unheard. “But I’m not giving up. I’ll call you,” he said.

“You won’t be able to get through.”

“I’ll call anyway and when you’re ready, you’ll be home soon?”

Her wan smile said all she could say.

The train swept by and its engine drowned whatever else Miles was saying and they had no more time. Urgent travelers climbed out of carriages and others climbed in. From waiting, suddenly the place was abuzz with baggage dragged and a hundred hearts stirring. Everyone was going somewhere. They were leaving or arriving or the one to stay behind. It was time to say good-bye and they both had tears in their eyes.

Whatever was coming, things had changed between them.

The train was waiting and he kissed her firmly, so firmly she thought he might not let go, might not let her get on the train before it pulled out of the station. Eleanor stepped inside the train and found her seat by a window. There were people standing on either side of the platform and from inside a group of them, he waved. He got smaller. People do get smaller. With perspective, everything gets smaller. She watched him turn and head inside under the roof where there were ivory stone columns with dark marble at the base and capital. She imagined him on a bench, watching people in the artfully designed station with its receding line of columns and steel. With perspective she saw how the train station mirrored the arc of the river.

H
er eyes dropped closed then opened and her skin brimmed with color when she saw Mead walking toward her at the station.

“You’re virtually transparent,” he said. “All the life that moves beneath your skin. It’s charming.” He took her bag.

“Thin-skinned? That’s not exactly me. What are you doing here?” She’d called from the train station to let Gwen know she was on her way back. She was happier to see him than she could have expected to be.

“I’m picking you up and taking you home.”

“And what is it you think you see under this skin?”

“I see passion pulling at you.” He took her arm and she was surprised.

“Well, that’s easy,” she said.

“I’m not finished,” he said. “I see confusion, too: a divided self, a self deciding whether or not it wants to know its Self.”

“That will take me all night to figure out. What you just said. What is it you just said, exactly?”

It was hard not to inhale him. He smelled of heather much of the time, and leather and wood. Eleanor felt soft, walking next to him.

He had no sense of entitlement, and yet the world was his place. When he was around, the world seemed a little more delightful in a nothing-matters-much sort of way, and there was a sound in the air, or maybe the absence of a hollow buzz. She thought she heard it for the first time the first day she went for a walk on the moors. Or maybe it wasn’t Mead at all, maybe it was a sound from inside her.

She laughed to herself and he looked her way. “I think the strangest thoughts in this place,” she said.

She liked the look of his hand as he carried her small bag. As they walked, she moved just a fraction closer to him.

“So what wild thought was it, now?”

She laughed the easiest laugh. A swing that took her so high she was scared but thrilled, coming down from the swing and feeling it sway to a stop, then twirling the ropes and letting it spin until it spun itself out, and then seeing the world was still there, just the way it always was but better.

“Do you know the Stafford Hotel?” she asked.

“In London. I know it. Is that where he’s staying?”

“That’s where he was.”

“Would he be the reason you left New York?”

“Not at all.”