The Missing World (22 page)

Recalling her map of the farm, he began in his own mind to make a map of Denholm. Here was the house where they lived, 8 Riverside Drive, beside the Teviot; there the primary school and, beyond, the village green with its monument to some war—Crimean or Boer or maybe the Great War? In all his years there, he’d never looked. Nearby was the playground. From the swings, the shops around the green were visible, including the newsagent’s run by Stephanie’s father.

A crush, people called it, meaning something light and ephemeral, not realising how utterly weighed down he’d felt as he followed her home from school, made excuses to go into the newsagent’s, sent her elaborate cards for Valentine’s Day and Christmas. Once Stephanie had dropped a glove, and he slept with it under his pillow, until his mother threw it out. In eighteen months they spoke barely a dozen times, banal exchanges about the weather, a teacher being ill. When her father sold the
shop and the family moved to Glasgow, Jonathan expected to plunge into an abyss. Instead he found himself whistling as he walked to school; he missed her, but he wasn’t entirely sorry to be weightless again.

Hazel sighed in her sleep, and he reached towards her. If only he’d thought to put out a nightdress. Now he faced the intricate aggravation of pyjamas. He unbuttoned the top and fondled her breasts. Another sigh. He kissed her neck and whispered her name, then held back. He didn’t want her awake, not yet. Clumsily, carefully, he removed her trousers, easing them down her legs and over her feet. She would wake up with him inside her, surrounded by his love, and they would be inseparable, soon to be married. She would never leave him again.

He stole from the bed and found a tube of lubricant in his washbag. Diminished by the cold, he was back beside her, heart racing. Hazel, he thought, I’m coming home. In the same meticulous way as he had removed her pyjamas, he edged her legs apart.

For one ineffable moment everything made sense. His head swam with happiness, and the fragrance of honey filled the room.

A cry rent the air.

He tried to tell himself it was pleasure, a shriek of pleasure.

“Stop. Get off me.”

“Hazel, I love you. Don’t be afraid.”

Her screams rose. He lowered his weight, pressing down against her breasts, her hips, her thighs, to keep her safe. If only she wouldn’t keep tossing her head, he would slip his tongue into her mouth to taste the sweetness. He wanted this to last forever—to keep moving slowly, inexorably, inside her—but the more she struggled, the fiercer his own movements became.

The first time she bucked beneath him, he didn’t know
what was happening. The second, he understood: she was having a seizure. Now he was fucking her at the deepest level, like the Pythian and her priest. The electricity that ran through her was coursing through him, too. As Hazel bucked once more, he came.

chapter 13

In what respect, Freddie wondered, was Thursday better. The day was chilly in that sneaky London way, windy but not enough to justify cancelling; cars lined both sides of the street; and worst of all, number 41, when he drove past, was dark. His excuse for seeing Hazel, checking their side of the roof, might easily come to nothing. After circling the block twice, he pulled over to dump the ladder and supplies on Mrs. Craig’s doorstep—if someone wanted to steal them, fine—and resigned himself to parking around the corner. And they hadn’t even agreed on a price, he remembered as he stumped back. Well, no favours on this golden road. He was going to do everything by the book: so much for materials, so much per hour.

Some of his crankiness faded at Mrs. Craig’s warm greeting. “Oh, good, Mr. Adams. You know, I realised last time we didn’t even check whether I had damage inside.”

“And do you?”

“I was waiting for you to take a look. No point in rushing to meet bad news.”

“That I can understand,” he said, bending to unlace his boots and fondle the cat. She led him upstairs to a room the
mirror image of Littleton’s study but so different that it took him a moment to recognise the similarity. The only furniture was a canvas chair and a long padded table. “My massage room,” she said. The walls were lined with posters of the body and with wooden shelves holding books and bottles of oil: rosemary, lavender, jasmine. He could see why she hadn’t noticed the problem. The room was softly lit and the leak was hidden by the shelving. When he removed the bottles the damp patch was markedly larger and wetter than next door.

“Tut tut,” said Mrs. Craig. “The gremlins have been at work. You’re here in the nick of time.”

Downstairs, she shut the cat in the living-room and told Freddie to shout if he needed anything. He carried the ladder through the side gate and, breathing hard, propped it up against the wall. Of course she would have a beautiful garden. A large herb bed was already green; clumps of lavender grew along the path and green spears—daffodils maybe—were shooting up. He stared at Hazel’s windows, dark on this side too. She hadn’t actually said she was too sick to go out; he’d simply wanted to believe her a princess in a tower.

Once he got the ladder and ridge ladder in place, he could see the extent of the damage: the flashing had lifted in half a dozen spots and several slates had slipped. He barely needed the dog to pry out the cement; in no time at all he was levering up the old flashing and measuring for the new. He was getting better at this business, if he did say so himself. The idea was both pleasing and alarming. He didn’t want to be a roofer all his life, for Pete’s sake. Though when he thought about the jobs his classmates had—lawyer, broker, consultant, internist, junior professor—there wasn’t one he coveted. Better to earn an autonomous living by the sweat of his brow than to take orders and meet schedules eight days a week.

He worked steadily for almost two hours, then came down
to beg a cup of tea and cut the slates. The first broke in his hands—so much for his newfound skill—but there was enough left to make an eaves slate and the others parted sharp and clean. A thrush, seemingly unfazed by his activities, was trundling a snail along the path. Following its passage, he noticed a light had come on in the kitchen of 41. Back up the ladder he began to hammer noisily, a message.
Ha-zel, I’m here
. Since giving her his address, he jumped every time the phone rang.

He was dressing the new flashing, cutting and bending the lead, when he heard a tapping sound. Hazel was at the study window. Through the glass her face shone even paler than before, though white people often did strike him that way, blanched as if they lived underground and never saw the sun. “Hi,” he called. “How are you?”

She shook her head. What did that mean? “I’m coming to check your roof later.”

Again the small shake. Suddenly her hands went to her face. Littleton appeared behind her. Freddie waved cheerfully. “Sorry about the noise.”

It was like watching a pantomime. Hazel turned her back to the window, Littleton scowled, and they both disappeared, leaving Freddie alone with the flashing.

He measured the next section, notched and cut the lead. The more he thought about it, the more worried he felt. On his previous visits Hazel had seemed ill at ease in Littleton’s company; just now she had looked genuinely afraid. If there was any chance of seeing her, he’d ring the bell at once, but the curmudgeonly Littleton would only have her hidden away. No, he must bide his time. Later, when he’d finished Mrs. Craig’s roof, then he would make an attempt. Back up the ladder, he wedged the flashing between the bricks and was moving to the next section when he ran out of cement. A yard to go, and not so much as a scraping left.

Inside, Mrs. Craig appeared from the living-room. Briefly he thought of telling her what he’d seen, then realised how intangible it was: Hazel looked pale, she acted surprised when Littleton appeared—so what? He confined himself to the cement and she suggested the DIY shop on the Holloway Road. “Or there’s a builders’ supply place five minutes up from the tube station.”

An hour later, he was done. Mrs. Craig offered him a tofu sandwich and asked if he would mind checking the front bay. “I’ve had my eyes on other matters.” She showed him the cracks along the cornices and Freddie said probably due to subsidence caused by the recent hot summers, but he’d be happy to take a look. The sandwich was totally tasteless. Had Felicity’s curries ruined his palate? Mrs. Craig ate hers with every sign of pleasure.

He was up the ladder at the front of the house, pulling clumps of leaves from the gutter, as he’d suspected no sign of a leak, when a woman—all he could see was her neat ponytail and dark coat—rang the bell at 41. She disappeared inside. Five minutes later, he was on the other half of the bay, the door opened again and Littleton stepped out, wearing a suit, overcoat, paisley scarf, and, quite unnecessarily, sunglasses. He stopped to stare darkly up at Freddie. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine. I’d like to check on your side before I leave.”

“I suppose,” Littleton grunted, “as you’re here. The key to the side door is under the nearest geranium.”

You’d have thought I was offering to rob him, Freddie thought, not do him a favour. As soon as the car rounded the corner, he was down the ladder and on the doorstep of 41. The woman, now wearing a neat cardigan and skirt, oddly like a uniform, answered. He explained his presence. “Whatever Mr. Littleton says,” she said.

“How’s Hazel?”

Her manner grew less brisk. “Tired. She was ill last night and it’s left her shaken.”

“I’m sorry. Will you tell her I was asking for her? My name is Freddie.”

She assured him she would. Again he got the ladder around the back and up. He was standing near the top, hammering at the flashing just to make a noise, feeling like an idiot, when below him the study window slid open. He climbed down a few rungs.

“How are you?” he whispered.

“Not so good.”

“That’s what the woman said. I’m sorry. Can I help?”

“Not today.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I have to get my strength back. I’m all muddled and upset.”

“Call me,” he said. “Anytime.”

Jonathan had stayed with Hazel for several hours. Gradually, without ever fully recovering consciousness, she shifted from the comatose state that followed a seizure into a deep and speechless sleep. In the morning she woke only when the hammering started. He came into the study to find her gazing out of the window at the roofer. “He’s fixing Mrs. Craig’s roof,” he explained, and offered to run her a bath. Hazel trembled—was she having another seizure?—and edged towards the door.

In his daydreams he had imagined their lovemaking would transform her back into the woman who had lured him away from half-eaten meals and half-watched films and once, on a June evening in the garden, had drawn him down onto the grass. But for the rest of the morning Hazel assiduously avoided him. When he came into a room, she left or stared at a book until he left. By the time Bernadette arrived, he’d been glad to
go to work. He was tired of feeling as if a huge hand were squeezing his chest every time he entered a room. Where would she be without him?

At the office he sat at his desk, emptying his in-tray and enjoying the round robin of his colleagues’ praise as they dropped off files and memos: how wonderful he was to Hazel, how devoted. No accident that he dallied, fielding a late phone call, sending one more e-mail, until the last possible moment. He arrived home to find Bernadette buttoning her coat. Before he could excuse his tardiness, she was gone. He was still hanging up his own coat, bracing himself for the evening ahead, when the bell rang.

Hoping for a brief reprieve—a canvasser, perhaps—he opened the door and discovered Maud. In the last twelve hours she had vanished from his mind. Now he stared, doubly amazed by her presence and by his own forgetfulness, while she explained that she’d spoken to Bernadette on the phone. “I brought soup. After last night, I thought something simple would be fine.”

“Last night,” he said, then realised she meant the imaginary supper with Steve and Diane.

And somehow they were outside embracing over her ten-speed, her tongue searching his. Only when she pulled away, asking him to hold the groceries and flowers, did it occur to him how easily Hazel could have seen them entwined in the square of light.

In the hall Maud propped her bike against the radiator and reclaimed the flowers. “White irises,” she said. “Can you put them in water?”

As he started towards the kitchen, he heard her voice from the living-room and, lower, Hazel’s. Christ, he thought, I shouldn’t leave them alone, but when he carried in the flowers, one glance at Hazel sent him backing out of the room, muttering
about work. Upstairs, he tried to imagine the worst-case scenario, each woman admitting their lovemaking, and drew a paralysing, shining blank.

Surprisingly, he managed to begin a report and indeed became so engrossed that the knock at the door made him start. “Hazel feels crummy,” Maud said. “She’s gone to bed.” And he knew nothing had changed, or not in that way.

“Did she take her medicine?”

“Yes.” She stepped closer. “I need to talk to you.” Then, seeing his gesture of alarm, she added, “Not here.”

“Shall I phone you?” In his desire to avert the present danger, he heard himself sounding almost eager.

“Yes, call me at the shop.”

“I will, tomorrow. But are you leaving? No soup?”

“I think I’d better.” She gave him a meaningful look, though quite what her meaning was, he hadn’t an inkling.

A blade of light across his face woke him. After Maud’s departure, he’d fallen asleep on the sofa, watching a film on TV, and when he stirred, long after midnight, had simply reached for the rug and remained. The spare-room bed offered no particular temptation, and joining Hazel did not bear consideration. Now, blinking away the wisps of a dream—he’d been bicycling along a river—he felt curiously well rested.

Half an hour later, bathed, dressed, coffee beside him, he sat at the kitchen table, paging through his beekeeper’s diary. In a few weeks it would be St. Gregory’s Day, when, by tradition, the spring flowers opened and the bees emerged. A year ago he’d found most of the bees in his middle hive dead.
Need to restock middle hive
, he read.
Try a Buckfast Queen?
Unbidden, the terse entry recalled the rest of that day. He’d come into the house upset—he should’ve been more vigilant, given the bees more food—to be confronted by Hazel holding one of his old
cheque books. “Who is S.B.?” she had asked. When he admitted the truth, something had happened between them as startling and irrevocable as Flopsy’s disappearance.