“I worry,” she said, “that if Helen decided to move away, we might never see Jenny again. Sometimes I lie awake, I feel so helpless. Edward says that the situation will get easier as Jenny gets older, and I'm sure that's true, if she still wants to see us.” Joyce sighed.
I did not know what to say, but I could not help feeling a flicker of pleasure, both at Joyce's criticisms of Helen and at the approval of me that voicing them implied. She punched the dough a few more times and rolled it into a ball, which she nestled carefully in a large china bowl. Her actions covered my silence. As she placed the bowl on the stove and draped a blue tea towel over it, there was a gentle knocking.
“Here's Raven,” Joyce said. Wiping her hands on her apron, she went to answer the door and returned followed by a small boy, who padded behind her in his stocking feet. “Raven, this is Celia. She's a friend of Stephen's.”
“Hello, Raven.”
“Hello. I live next door.” To my surprise he came over and held out his hand for me to shake. “Is Jenny here?” he asked. He remained standing, as if uncertain whether to leave or stay.
“I'm afraid she couldn't come,” said Joyce.
He promptly pulled out the chair beside me and sat down.
“You're making bread,” he said.
“Yes, but I only just started. It still has to rise. Did people like your loaf?” He nodded. Joyce turned towards me. “Everyone in Raven's class had to make something and explain how it worked. Raven chose bread. He drew pictures of all the stages and took the loaf he'd made to school.” As she spoke, Joyce was opening and closing the refrigerator, slipping bread into the toaster, slicing some cheese. “Tomato or cucumber?” she asked.
“Tomato, please. Do you know how yeast works?”
I shook my head, and Raven launched into an explanation. Yeast, it turned out, was a fungus. Joyce set a cheese sandwich in front of him, but he refrained from eating until he was sure that I understood the whole process; then he turned to his sandwich with equal seriousness. As soon as he had finished, Joyce asked him to carry a thermos of coffee out to Edward and Stephen. He thanked her for the sandwich and went to do her bidding.
After the door had closed behind him, Joyce smiled at me. “So now you know everything about yeast.”
“Yes. What a nice boy.” I carried my coffee cup over to the sink. Something about Raven's initial hesitation had made me think that he was relieved rather than otherwise to find Jenny absent. “Do he and Jenny get on well?” I asked.
Joyce looked up from wiping the counter. “I think they do. Sometimes when he comes to the house Jenny is a bit standoffish. I suspect she doesn't like the fact that Raven gets to see more of us than she does; she can be quite territorial, as maybe you've noticed. Now,” she said briskly, “what are we going to have for lunch?”
When we left, late on Sunday afternoon, Joyce and Edward walked out to the car with us. “Come again soon,” Joyce said. “We're always here.” She put her arms around me, and briefly I was enveloped in the sweet odour of baking. She released me, and Edward stepped forward to shake my hand; he too urged me to return.
Stephen hugged both his parents. “Thank you for everything. We'll be in touch soon.” He climbed into the car beside me and started the engine. We turned onto the main road. “You see,” he said, “they like you. You'll have to tell Suzie that it is possible.”
I smiled. As we drove through the village, I looked at the houses on either side of the road, each in the middle of its tidy garden. The approval of Stephen's parents, like the keystone of an arch, I thought, completed our union. I placed my hand lightly on his leg. “Joyce really misses Jenny,” I said.
“I know. When do you think would be a good weekend to take her for a visit?”
“Maybe in a fortnight?” We had passed beyond the village, and as Edward had told me, the road was bordered by muddy fields; in some, flocks of sheep were grazing among the turnips.
“A fortnight is Valentine's Day, and I want to be romantic with you, not go home to my parents.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “But then it will be three weeks before we can go again, unless we go next Friday.”
“That's too soon. Joyce would start to get on my nerves if I saw her two weekends in a row.”
“Why don't we invite her to come to Edinburgh for the day?”
“Now there's a good idea. We could go on some sort of outing together, and no one would have time to be badly behaved. Good.” He squeezed my hand.
I was still sitting with my head on his shoulder, gazing out of the window, when suddenly I saw an arrow of geese flying purposefully across the grey sky. “Look,” I said. Stephen stopped the car and we got out. The lonely cries of the geese filled the air, and as they flew low over the road, we could hear the whistling sound of their wings. They landed a few hundred yards away in a field of stubble.
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When we reached the city Stephen drove directly to my flat. We both had work that had to be finished by next morning, and we had agreed to spend the evening apart. During the last month I had returned to my flat only to change my clothes or to pick up mail, never staying longer than a few minutes. Now, as I climbed the stairs, I found myself looking forward to spending an evening there alone.
I opened the front door. Immediately I knew that something was wrong. There was a slight ticking noise, louder and less regular than a clock, and for a moment I was sure that there was someone else in the flat. I put down my overnight bag, conscious of the minute slippage of my vertebrae, one against the next, all the way down my spine. Cautiously I pushed open the door of the living room, so that the light from the hall fell in a bright rectangle across the threshold. I listened intently until I was convinced that whatever the source of the noise, it was not human. Then I switched on the overhead light.
The high white ceiling was traced with jagged brown cracks, from which the water was slowly dripping down in
half a dozen places. The upholstered chairs were sodden, the shades of the two lamps I had bought were crinkled and stained. I went over to the bookshelf and saw that the water had trickled down my books from top to bottom. When I stooped to feel the carpet, the fabric was bloated with water.
I went to the phone and dialled Stephen's number. After a dozen rings I told myself it was too soon for him to be home and hung up. I turned on the gas fire and began to take down my books, spreading them out on the kitchen counter to dry. I found myself wishing that Tobias were here; his absence intensified my loneliness.
After ten minutes I called again. The curtains were open, and from where I stood holding the phone I could see my reflection in the window. I watched my head floating in one pane, my arm in another. If Stephen had so many exercises to correct, why was he not sitting at the living room table correcting them within a few strides of the phone? What could explain his absence?
Periodically I tried again. From the beginning Stephen and I had been so much in each other's company that the telephone had never played an important role between us. Now I let the phone ring and ring, not even expecting that it would be answered, but for the bleak consolation of being able to imagine the sound reverberating through his flat.
I carried another armful of books over to the counter. Three cups on the shelf above the sink caught my eye. I had bought them in an Oxfam shop soon after I arrived in Edinburgh. They were a dark orange, almost an umber colour, with a golden filigree pattern. I had noticed them in the window and gone back several times until the shop was open. “It's a lovely pattern,” the woman at the counter had said.
“Too bad there isn't a set, but I'm afraid all we get here is odds and ends.” I gazed around the room. Everything I sawâthe books, the lamps, the pictures, the brightly coloured cushions, the plants, everything I had bought to make
the room mine
â
struck me as pathetic and trivial. My cherished possessions were merely the remnants of other people's abundance. The steady drip of the water mocked my efforts to make this place into a home.
When Stephen answered, at last, I could only say his name.
“Celia, what's wrong? What's the matter?”
“Where have you been?”
“I stopped to buy groceries on the way home.”
I managed to tell him about the ceiling, but I could not have begun to explain what it was that I was feeling, or why. Misery had been lying in wait for me, like a tiger for a lamb, and found me an easy victim. The sense of safety so strong when I left Joyce and Edward's had vanished; I was convinced that I would always be coming home, alone, to find my life in ruins.
“Make a pot of tea. I'll be over in ten minutes,” he said. “We can clean up together and then you'll come and stay here.”
I made tea and turned on the radio. Then I went into the bedroom and sorted out my clothes until I heard a knock at the door.
Stephen was suitably appalled. Somehow his horrified exclamations cheered me up. “This is terrible.” He squeezed the arm of a chair. “The furniture will be fine when it dries out; anyway, most of it is Malcolm's. I'm certain that the landlord is responsible for whatever damage there is. We'll get Edward on the warpath.”
While we were rolling up the sodden carpet and organising buckets, he suggested we should buy a house. “It's stupid to have the anxiety of looking after two flats when we're almost always together.”
On my knees, spreading newspapers on the damp floorboards, I agreed. If I had blinked, tears would have run down my cheeks.
Next morning when I drew the curtains of Stephen's bedroom
window, I discovered that it had snowed during the night. As far as I could see, the rooftops glistened white against the blue sky; only an occasional dark patch showed where the snow had already begun to melt, revealing the slate beneath. We had been feeding the pigeons, and they were nestling in one corner, looking up at me expectantly.
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Stephen had told me that it was still too early in the year for there to be many properties on the market, but at work a few days later, glancing through the
Scotsman
while I waited for the kettle to boil, I saw an advertisement for a garden flat. I telephoned the school and managed to catch Stephen between classes. When he heard the description of the flat, he said, “It sounds exactly like what we're looking for. Why don't you try to get us an appointment to see it at lunchtime? I have the first period in the afternoon free.”
“You mean today?” In my excitement I had rung him without thinking about what we might do next; I was taken aback by the immediacy of his response.
“Yes, unless you're busy.”
“It does say in need of modernisation.”
“That's going to be true of almost anything we can afford,” said Stephen. “There's no harm in looking.”
The solicitor who was advertising the flat seemed to find my haste unseemly, and only after I assured him that weeks might pass before Stephen and I were again available, did he agree to see if a visit could be arranged. He spoke so grudgingly that I was convinced the answer would be no, but when he called back he said, “Miss Gilchrist, Mrs. Menzies is expecting you at twelve forty-five. I should tell you that she is in her eighties. If you have any questions about the property, please refer them to me.”
It was a cold, bleak day, and even at noon night seemed imminent. The flat was in a part of the city called Trinity, which bordered the Firth of Forth, but any romantic notions
I had about being by the sea were soon dispelled. A busy road, lined with factories and warehouses, ran alongside the water. When at last we found the address it turned out to be a quiet side street off the Trinity Road. We parked at the top end, opposite the grocer's shop on the corner, and began to walk down, searching for Mrs. Menzies' house.
“On a nice day there'll be a beautiful view from here,” Stephen said, gesturing towards the water visible in the distance. Meanwhile under the grey sky, the two-storey stone houses looked dark and gloomy; the front gardens were protected by bedraggled privet hedges, and the windows were hung with lace curtains, which made Stephen mutter about suburbia. Number 54 was in these respects identical to its neighbours, except that a light was on in the front room. We paused at the garden gate.
“I think I've brought us on a wild-goose chase,” I said.
“Nonsense, we have to start somewhere. We can't expect the first house we see to be perfect.” He led the way through the gate and pressed the doorbell. Such a long interval passed as we stood before the faded green door that we began to wonder if, in spite of the light, there was no one home.
At last the door opened to reveal a tiny elderly woman leaning on a walking stick. Mrs. Menzies smiled up at us. “Come in,” she said. “Please go into the living room. First on the left.”
We did as instructed and, slowly, she followed. On the table in front of the fire was a tea tray; Stephen and I exchanged glances. Mrs. Menzies lowered herself into an upright chair next to the fire. She hooked her stick over the back of the chair and asked whether we took milk and sugar. “What a frightful day,” she said when we had our tea. “I wonder if you'd mind telling me your names again. I didn't quite catch what Angus said on the telephone.”
We repeated our names.
“Stephen. My husband's name was Stephen.” She nodded,
smiling to herself, and began to tell us how she and Stephen had lived here for nearly fifty years. He had died four years ago, and reluctantly she was planning to move into sheltered housing in Dundee, to be near her son. “It's a bother for him and his wife to keep driving through to visit me, and as you can see, I don't get around much anymore.” She looked at us in turn, her eyes bright in her deeply wrinkled face. “And are you married?” she asked.
Stephen shook his head. “Not yet,” he said, with a smile.
“How I envy you young people,” she sighed. “We had to get married just to be able to walk down the street holding hands. Not that I'd have done things differently; still it would have been nice to have had the choice.”
“Do you think we could take a look around?” said Stephen.
“Yes, of course. What am I thinking of.”
She led us slowly from room to room. The flat was arranged around the hall into which we had first entered; there was a dining room, a living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. The kitchen lay beyond the dining room, and through the back door provided the only access to a large garden. The decor was familiar to me from childhood visits to my great-aunt Marigold. Each room displayed a different kind of patterned wallpaper and contained twice as much furniture as necessary. Every available surface was crowded with objects: pictures, books, ashtrays, souvenirs, knickknacks. From the kitchen window Mrs. Menzies gestured at the garden. “You can't tell now, but when the spring comes all my flowers will be popping up. Do you like gardening?”
Stephen told her about Edward. “Oh, well then,” she said, “you'll be an expert.”
When we tried to ask her practical questions, about the neighbours, the upkeep, she brushed them aside. “Ask Angus. He's known me and Stephen for twenty years; if anyone has the answers, he does.” It did not seem to occur to her that we
might not want to buy the flat. She had interviewed us for the position of successor, and we had proved satisfactory. “I think you'll be very happy here,” she said as she showed us to the front door.
Back out in the street, the wind had picked up, and it was even colder than before. As soon as we had closed the garden gate Stephen exclaimed, “Celia, you're wonderful. It's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Don't you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean it's virtually a museum, but all the rooms could be really nice if we fixed them up.”