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But Tessa was certain. ‘We’ll go.’
It wasn’t until they arrived at St John’s in the dark that they realised the enormity of their decision. Only the great hall was inhabitable; the rest of the house was a pile of furniture and rubble. On everything was a layer of white plaster dust. There was no electricity.
Dee-Dee and Tessa stood in the damp gloom of the great hall. Don, with a torch, sought out kindling to make a fire. In front of the fireplace was a large mattress and blankets. Tessa and Dee-Dee sank onto these.
‘I’ll light the Aga,’ said Don. ‘It takes a bit of time, but then we can have hot water. How about some food, are you hungry?’ Tessa and Dee-Dee’s faces were blank. Don sat next to them. ‘Well, it is primitive, but you get used to it.’ The fire was beginning to burn and smoke. ‘It does that,’ said Don, poking it. Tessa and Dee-Dee coughed. Wind blew down the chimney. Tessa thought of their comfortable flat in Notting Hill, now packed in Don’s van. She felt too tired to move. Don went to the kitchen to coax the Aga. They wrapped themselves in blankets and gazed into the smoke.
‘Oh, Tessy,’ whispered Dee-Dee.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Tessa, not sounding very sure.
Don came back with bread and soup. ‘It’s nettle gruel, I picked them yesterday.’ He lit a large candle and placed it by the fire. There were no spoons so they drank straight from the bowls. It was lukewarm.
‘This is our first meal here,’ he said solemnly. ‘It’s a celebration, we have begun a new existence. It’s not going to be easy. We have chosen to live in this ancient and wonderful house. We have given up comforts … At the moment what we see is the ashes, but we will be like the phoenix and rise out of the ashes.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No,’ said Tessa.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dee-Dee.
‘Nor am I,’ said Don, ‘but I think we need a prayer; prayer’s very strengthening.’
‘We could pray to the spirit of the house,’ suggested Tessa, feeling very much that St John’s was a living being they were going to capture.
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Don was very excited. ‘Let’s join hands, then … and close our eyes … how shall I start?’
They sat in a tight circle. The fire crackled. ‘St John’s, you have seen many people … um … look down on us now and have mercy … we have not come to destroy but to rebuild … we want to see you filled again with a working community as it was … oh, gosh … ages ago … St John’s, have mercy on us and give us strength, you were built by men, but have outlasted men, you have stood through storms and wars. Help us to achieve our purpose, to become a centre of inspiration.’
Tessa listened, to the wind in the chimney, the fire, the silence of a country night. She opened her eyes. Dee-Dee and Don were smiling at her. ‘Phew,’ said Don, and wrapped himself in the blanket too.
‘That was beautiful,’ said Dee-Dee, all dreamy.
‘This soup is disgusting,’ said Tessa, and they all laughed.
‘Where shall we sleep?’ asked Dee-Dee after some time. The fire was nearly out.
‘Oh,’ and Don was only slightly embarrassed; ‘I thought perhaps you could sleep here with me …’
Tessa put down her pencil. She had finished. Then what happened, she thought as she picked up her things. Dirty hippies have a sex orgy. But as she walked back to St John’s she was angry. It hadn’t been like that, it hadn’t been sordid, it had been beautiful and special … she opened her car door and Mirabelle came running out of the house.
‘Have you finished? Do have some more tea.’
‘I have to go.’
‘How’s it coming on?’
‘Oh … fine … it hasn’t changed much,’ said Tessa, off guard.
‘Changed? Then you’ve been here before?’
‘Oh … only once … years ago … in the seventies.’
‘Then you must have known the … previous occupants?’
‘No … not really, friends of friends, you know.’
‘Bernard said they left the place in a terrible state. And that little girl …’ She quivered. Tessa said nothing. There was an embarrassed silence.
‘Well, well … they knew all about vegetables and flowers and things, so Bernard says … are you sure you won’t have more tea?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow at nine-thirty,’ said Tessa, and left.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_deff06f1-b6a4-57e1-9a1e-975515e93ea9)
Tessa woke in her hotel room in Bury St Edmunds. She had been dreaming about Dee-Dee. Whenever she dreamt about Murray or Don she woke feeling angry, but a dream about Dee-Dee always left her sad. She had close female friends now; Fiona, who worked in the gallery in Bath, and Bunty who she went cycling with, but nobody was as close as Dee-Dee had been.
As far back as she could remember Dee-Dee was there. She came to play every other Saturday. Tessa was an only child. Her parents felt she needed ‘company’. Her dream was vague but what remained was a picture of Dee-Dee, crinkly gingery hair, wide blue eyes, pink cheeks and freckles, the little girl and the adult fused into one. She wondered, but only briefly, what Dee looked like now. With this thought she got out of bed and drew the curtains.
It was sunny, a good day for sketching. She wished bitterly she was back in her house. The hotel room with apricot sheets and curtains depressed her; there was nothing here she could use to strengthen herself. She ran a bath. At least the bathroom was stark and white. It was only seven o’clock.
Two girls in the garden with all the dolls. They were playing hairdresser’s, Dee-Dee’s favourite game, or rather she was playing and Tessa was watching.
‘… And this one’s called Dibby and she has beautiful yellow hair and I’m going to plait it and put blue ribbons on, and this one’s called Dobby and she has beautiful black hair and I’m going to make it all curly …’
She stopped in the middle of her monologue.
‘Tessy, will we always be friends?’
‘Yes,’ said Tessa; she couldn’t imagine it any different.
Dee-Dee began to brush the doll’s hair vigorously. ‘You’re full of tangles, you’re quite matty … Tessy, will we be friends even when we’re married?’ getting married was Dee-Dee’s other favourite game.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa, turning one of the dolls upside-down.
‘You mustn’t do that, she’s having a perm … Tessy, when people are married they don’t have friends …’
Tessa looked at her seriously. Dee-Dee had rosy cheeks and ribbons. She was pretty, Tessa wasn’t. Her parents called her ‘peaky’. ‘Why not?’ she said.
‘They just don’t. My mummy’s got no friends at all, and my daddy …’
Tessa thought, it was true, her parents didn’t have any friends either. The only person who ever came to stay was Auntie and she was horrible.
‘You see,’ said Dee-Dee, ‘when people get married and grown up they go and live in houses and they … don’t … have … friends.’ She threw the doll across the lawn. ‘You’re too bad, you’re too fidgety!’
‘Why can’t we still be friends?’ said Tessa.
‘Because we can’t, it’s not allowed.’ Dee-Dee was cross. She went all pink when she was cross.
Tessa thought again. She thought of next door and across the road and all of Lime Avenue and down to the shops and back. People in houses with babies and dogs and gardens. It made her cross too. She jumped up.
‘I want to be friends for ever.’
‘Well, we can’t!’
‘Why can’t we?’
‘We just can’t.’ Dee-Dee had started to cry. Any minute now Tessa’s mother would run out and ask what on earth was going on.
Tessa sat down. ‘Dee-Dee,’ she said, ‘why can’t we be different …’
Tessa moved her feet in the bath water. Ripples ran up her body. She moved her feet again and more ripples ran over her. She was lean and muscular. She used her body as a means of transport. These days she rarely connected it with pleasure.
Dee-Dee woke in the middle of their first night at St John’s.
‘Tessy, where’s the loo? I can’t remember, I’m dying for a piss.’
‘Oh, Dee … it’s on the other side and up some stairs.’
‘That’s miles away … I can’t find the torch … Tessy, there might be spiders …’
‘Shhhhh.’ But Don was fast asleep. They looked at him. He was lying on his back, both arms stretched out.
‘He’s exhausted,’ said Tessa, and they giggled.
‘Oh Tessy, don’t, I’ll wet myself.’
‘You’ll have to go outside.’
‘Somebody might see me.’
‘Dee-Dee you are a dope, we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘If I must.’
Wrapped up in one blanket, they stepped into the night.
‘Oh, look! Wow!’ The sky was filled with stars. There was a thin new moon and the constellations were clear, each star a pinprick of brilliance. The Milky Way reeled over the Hall.
‘It’s trippy!’ said Dee-Dee, breathless. ‘Oh, I must have this piss.’
‘Now I want to go too.’
They squatted by the wall. Their two streams of urine merged into one and ran gurgling down a drain. They stayed there gazing at the heavens.
‘I got used to squatting in India,’ said Dee-Dee. ‘Everybody squats … the stars there were … cosmic. Jeremy tried to tell me the names but I’ve forgotten.’
‘I used to have a book about stars, that one like a W is Cassiopeia and that’s Taurus the bull, and that’s Hercules …’
‘I can’t see it.’
‘In the book there were pictures, it made it clearer.’
They held hands under the blanket.
‘Don’s lovely, isn’t he?’ said Dee after a while.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it will be like this every night?’
‘Why not?’ and they laughed nervously.
‘Are you in love with him?’ asked Dee-Dee.
‘I don’t know, really … but I like him … are you?’
‘I don’t think so, but he’s special, you know.’
‘Well, we’ll share him then.’
‘Until?’
‘Until what?’
Then a shooting star skidded across the sky and disappeared behind the barns.
‘Ohhhh!’ exclaimed Dee-Dee.
‘It’s a sign,’ said Tessa.
Tessa drove to St John’s. It was a clear Sunday morning. There was much less traffic than the day before. The fields and villages flashed past without interruption. No shoppers, no energetic families. People were still in bed or reading the papers at breakfast. Yawning, stretching. Only much later would start the rush to the sea.
A sunny day, slow-moving puffy clouds, hardly a breeze. It was going to be hot. Farmers were deciding to start the harvest. Combines heaved down the narrow roads of the Saints, their drivers shut away in airless glass. Modern harvesting is dusty, noisy, unpleasant. But around St John’s the fields were quiet; after all, it had been an unpredictable summer. The wheat was golden, its grains plump and ripe. It was doomed.
Mirabelle was dressed and immaculate. She looked like she had been up for hours and her manner was just as brightly brittle. Tessa felt over-casual in old jeans and a white shirt. Mirabelle was in dusky pink with matching shoes and nails. Her lips were also pink. They framed her smiling teeth.
‘What a lovely day … I do love the sun … do you want coffee?’
‘Later perhaps.’
‘At eleven? Yes? I’ll bring it to you. Will you be in the same place?’
‘No …’ Tessa frowned at the Hall. The sun glinted on the church windows. St John’s appeared bold, defiant almost. ‘Does the walled garden still exist?’
‘The parterre?’
‘You could call it that … I’ll start there, it’s an interesting foreground.’
