Solsbury Hill A Novel (29 page)

Mead was outside waiting for her in a peacoat and black corduroy pants. As was often the case since she’d been in England, Eleanor was wearing the clothes she’d worn the day
before. She checked in the rearview mirror, but there was nothing to do about the way she looked: she’d been fretting and desperate since the morning.

Mead stepped up and opened the door for her, took her in his arms, and held her close, held her long enough to break her heart open. She took his hand and led him away from the pub. Holding hands and walking, the simplest thing in the world and it felt like heaven and gold.

She told him the full length of her story from the beginning to the end, from the awful sheets on the bed at the inn to the feel of Mrs. Garrens’ cheek against hers. In telling it, the story began to make a different kind of sense to her, and she knew that sometime she would want to look carefully at the pictures Mrs. Garrens had given her. Find her own features in his face. See what Anne Sutton and Martin Garrens looked like when they were in love.

A waxing gibbous moon in the sky, as she and Mead walked back to the pub. She went straight to a man at the bar and asked if she could have a cigarette. His silver lighter snapped open and she leaned in, watched the end catch fire, and thanked him. She inhaled deeply, blew a stream of smoke into the air. Popped a few perfect circles. She hadn’t made smoke circles since she learned how to make them when she was sixteen, but the nicotine went straight to her head and calmed her like a magic blanket. Made the world fuzzy around her.

They sat on a couch by the fireplace. “Did you know about this?” she asked Mead.

“No, I didn’t. Not exactly.”

“All in all, it’s not the worst thing that’s happened,” she said, feeling worldly. “If I get myself out of the picture. All my feelings and stuff like that. Think about it,” she said to Mead as if persuading him, “how was my mother going to tell a little girl all that?”

She went back to the stranger at the bar to ask if she could possibly have another. “I guess I’ll have a whisky with this one,” she said to Danny, the bartender. She waited for the drink, and for a moment at the bar felt she had all the time in the world and nowhere she had to be, as she watched Danny pour her drink.

She thanked him and ambled back to the couch. Spent from the day. Worn out from deep inside. She sat as close to Mead as she could.

“She didn’t mean to have that crash. Right?” She offered him a sip of her whisky and he took it. “Maybe she was going to bring him back with her, change their lives and be together.” Her open palms against her face, she folded forward and cried for a moment—silent and shaking and all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere—and then she sat up and wiped the tears away.

“Did you know that I met him? When I was a kid, I met him. She brought me to meet him. That was bold of her,
wasn’t it?” Eleanor felt manic. “We took a trip, just the two of us, my mother and I. I think they were there together and I didn’t know it, but he did things with us. Just sort of showed up. And at night she’d go out after I was sleeping.” Then she asked him,

“What did you mean, ‘not exactly’? A little bit ago, you said you didn’t know, at least not exactly.”

He took a sip, sat back, stretched his arm along the back of the chair so it wrapped around her without touching her. “I meant I knew there was something. It didn’t mean much to me when Alice talked about it, but when she was ill she started thinking about you taking on the place and she said a few things about your mum and this man Martin. She was mulling over some responsibility she had, because she pulled at Anne to come home, to come back to Yorkshire, and felt responsible for all of it.

“But then she talked about your dad, John, and the way he loved you, and the way Anne loved him.”

Eleanor’s mute nod.

“She said he lost every ounce of brightness when your mum died.”

“But it wasn’t because she died,” Eleanor said. “He must have found out about Garrens then. He must have pulled away because he knew about him. Jesus, it must have been awful. Alone with me every day, and all of a sudden a stranger to him.”

Mead leaned his forehead against her forehead. “Your mum cherished him, your dad. He was a hero, to her. That’s what I mostly remember, from what Alice said. She talked about how fiercely your mum loved him.”

“That she loved him.” Eleanor sat up straight, turned to look Mead in the face to make sure she was understanding. “My dad, John?”

He nodded and Eleanor’s spine bent with softness, as Mead continued the story.

“Alice said you and your dad would put on plays for your mum, that he took you everywhere he went on Saturdays, no matter what he had to do. I think she said he taught you bunny ears for how to tie your shoes.”

Her upper body was trembling with remembering.

“He made a puppet theater for you,” his face smiled, “and cobbled together some puppets, too.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, it’s true, every part of it’s true. I can’t make sense of this, this new thing, but I know who my dad is.” Her words were hiccups as she tried to speak through silent sobs. “He walked me to school in the morning, ripped off Band-Aids without any pain.” She swallowed and her voice squeaked and Mead held her close. “He taught me to swim and to dive and not be afraid.” Eleanor managed to inhale a full breath. She took Mead’s hand in her hands and turned her whole
body toward him. Like a hungry flower, she’d been watered and with gratitude she kissed him.

E
leanor walked into the study where Gwen stood, looking into the courtyard. Gwen turned toward her and said, “Mead told me at breakfast this morning. I am sorry beyond words, Eleanor. I wish I’d been the one to tell you. I wish I’d said something. I know Alice meant to, and I should have but didn’t know when, with all that was happening.” Gwen’s eyes teared up and she slapped the tears away with the backs of her hands.

Eleanor stepped in and wrapped her arms around her.

“It’s all pretty simple,” Eleanor said. “It’s just the way things are.” She stepped back. “When are you going?” she asked.

“Not till tomorrow.”

“Why do you have to go? Why can’t you stay here?”

“I’ve got to get back to Cambridge. It’s where we live. I suppose it’s where I live now. It’s where our friends are. But you’ll come, for a visit. Not now, I know, but you’ll be back, you’ll come and visit the house there. It’s very different from here, you know. I think you’ll like it.”

“Gwen, someone has to stay here. I can’t stay. I can’t take all of this on. I’ve got a whole life in New York City and I really can’t stay, now.”

“A whole life” sounded insincere and pale and small.

“Don’t let this change anything,” Gwen said. “This world is yours. Unequivocally yours, whatever you do.”

It was the room where everything had started. That first night when she’d sat at the edge of this couch.

Gwen pressed her cool hand against Eleanor’s face. “You have my numbers. When you need me, when you’ve decided what you’re doing, whether it’s now or much later. Nothing will change. As you can see, this place survives in spite of everything. And you belong here. Whether you stay or go, it will always be yours.”

Tilda walked by with a bowl of carrots and peas and a platter of roast beef on her way to the dining room to serve Gwen an early supper.

“What will happen with Tilda and Granley? Will they stay?”

“They live here. They take care of the place. I know it seems like everything’s topsy-turvy, but they’ll be here, I’ll be back,” Gwen reassured her. “And Mead . . .” She stopped herself. “You’ll have a bite with me?”

“I’m not hungry.” Eleanor looked past the long hall through the front windows toward the moors as if they called to her. “I’m going to go out for another walk soon.”

“Is that a good idea?” Gwen looked concerned. “It’s going to be dark in an hour.”

“There’s a full moon. I won’t go far.”

“Please stay and have a bite with me.”

Eleanor wrapped her arms around herself. “I will. I’ll sit for a little bit.”

The sound of Gwen’s knife and fork against the porcelain plate, the whistle in the chimney—Eleanor spoke softly so as not to disturb any of it. “Did you always know Martin Garrens was my father? Did Alice always know?”

Gwen placed her knife on one side of the plate and her fork on the other. She pressed her napkin against her mouth and set it back on her lap. “I believe we did,” she said. “Alice wanted to say something: it was one of the reasons she had me call. But once she saw you, seeing you moved so many feelings inside her. Your face seemed so happy, for one thing. She kept saying so, and she didn’t want to take that away. Every day, when the night came, she resolved to tell you the next day. We lay beside each other and she spoke of nothing else, nothing but the bittersweetness of having you here, of not having known you for longer, having to leave you . . .”

Something hard had hold of Eleanor. “But why didn’t she say something to me sooner, tell me years ago?”

Gwen held Eleanor’s eyes and Eleanor knew, she knew inside, she was old enough to know the truth. “It would have taken too much from you,” Gwen said. “How could anyone take John from you?” Gwen didn’t need to take hold of Eleanor’s hand. Her voice held her, her eyes held her, her love moved inside her till it softened what was hard. “When, dear heart, when would we have broken in and insisted on the truth being told? I’m sorry, dear, but when exactly? There was never a right time.”

“I know.” Eleanor pushed her chair away. She got up from the table and stood behind Gwen’s chair, put her hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to go walking, but I promise I’ll be okay.”

“I expect I’ll see you in the morning.” Gwen’s hands were folded in her lap and Eleanor knew she wouldn’t finish her dinner but would walk around the fountain for a while before heading back to the gardener’s cottage for one last night without Alice at Trent Hall.

Eleanor kissed the top of Gwen’s head. “See you in the morning.”

She put on her coat in the front hall, heaved open the heavy front door, and started in the direction of the pond and waterfall.

She took off one boot and stuck in her toe, her big toe, and the water was icy cold. But she pulled off her other boot and then dropped her old jeans. Her coat was already behind her on a stone. She pulled her sweater over her head and her two shirts came with it.

“Don’t be silly,” the young and healthy Emily said. “It’s freezing in there.”

“I’m going in,” Eleanor said. She took off her pink and red lace bra and stepped out of the matching underwear. She dove in.

Emily walked into the water in her long skirt and stood by the side with her shawl open to wrap around Eleanor when she came out.

“You’re blue. You’ll make yourself sick,” she said.

But Eleanor turned on her back and moved her arms through the water to keep herself moving, her body afloat.

Emily wrapped herself in the shawl again.

“You know the whole confusion began because I should have gone home with Robert. I should have known not to turn away from him. Ah, if only we could know.” She spoke in a very small voice. Everything about her, though she stood five feet, six inches tall, seemed contracted and small.

“I’m going to walk to the Outer Hebrides. If Robert can walk from there to here to find me, then I can walk.” She looked north.

Eleanor sank under the water, blue and shivering with cold.