Conservatory

Ted took the bottle of wine from the fridge and stepped through to the conservatory, where Jo sat on the couch clipping her toe nails. She was collecting the tiny pieces and putting them in the hollowed lid of an old paint tin. Ted pulled the stopper from the bottle and filled her glass.

“Thanks,” she said quietly. He thought there was a quiet smile, too. Just a flicker.

He sat in the basket chair opposite her and refilled his own glass. Then he set the bottle down on the floor beside him. It was late August and there was still enough light in the evening sky for them not to need the candles, though he’d lit them anyway – a small pool of them, floating in a dish of blue glass on the coffee table. It seemed to improve the mood. Earlier, after their words – not really a row, more of a silly disagreement – she’d gone and sat in the front room on her own for a while. He’d opened the bottle then and was on the second glass before she came through and sat with the clippers. It was a familiar thing. A distraction. A signal that she was prepared to be with him, but was still occupied with her own thoughts.

He eased back in the chair and took a mouthful of wine. The garden door was open and through it he could see Mickey, Jo’s tabby cat, huddled up under the plum tree, blinking at midges. The air was heavy and still – thundery, Ted thought. There was a sweetness in it, too – enough to take the edge off the mildewy smell that was always there in the conservatory. The day before’s rain had seeped in where the frames were decayed and the glass was cracked. They’d placed buckets and pots everywhere, catching most of it – but the damage had long been done. The carpet was rotten and the paintwork was blackened with mould. A lick of paint would have to do until they had the money, they’d agreed. It wasn’t a priority, anyway. Other things first.

He took another mouthful and half-closed his eyes, listening to the tiny click of the nail clippers… listening for another word, but partly grateful when it didn’t come. He wanted his own thoughts, too, for a while. Time to let things settle in his head. He hated this sort of thing. The bickering over nothing. The way she’d go quiet. Though he knew, of course, what the real issue was. The thing that was always there. The thing they didn’t speak about directly, but which came up in the allusions she’d make. Forty approaching. The spare room. Let’s get settled first, he always said. All these things in their own time. Though he knew it was growing shorter. Like the daylight. Like the end of a season. Which it was, really. A drawing in and a cooling. A dying away. It bothered him – of course it did. Promises made. It jabbed like a needle.

In some ways, it still astonished him to think of it all: the fact of his being here, in this house, overlooking this garden from this chair, in the company of this woman who – whatever else – he loved beyond doubt. Less than a year ago, he’d been living a life so far removed as to seem like it belonged to someone else. A life that, despite its shortcomings, fitted well enough. A small flat in the centre of town. He was between jobs then, but was using the chance to enjoy some space and time. Time to work on the novel he’d had in mind for a while. In many ways, he’d felt like he was between lives, too. The liminal time, as he’d heard it described – the period between the end of one thing and the start of another. He was ready for something new to happen, without really knowing what it would be – though he’d hoped the novel might figure in it somewhere. The flowering of a talent. A new direction.

And then – there it was. On a whim, he’d signed for an evening class. Creative Writing. He’d always been sceptical about such things – Dickens had done alright without them! – but the novel was losing itself around Chapter Eight, and he’d thought there was no harm in trying. If nothing else, it would give him the chance to confirm his suspicions. On the first night, he almost didn’t go after all. And then he did. And then he almost stayed on the bus anyway. And then he didn’t. Lives change on the basis of such small decisions, as he knew now. In he went. And there she was. Her with her poetry that made his neck tingle with its images and verbal twists. And to hear her read it out in that voice! And then he’d read out bits of his novel, and at coffee break she’d come to speak to him about it. How much she’d enjoyed it. Where she thought it might go. They’d discovered a mutual interest in certain writers. Edna St Vincent Millay. Czeslaw Milosz. Tim O’Brien. Chekhov. Irvine Welsh. And she hated Harry Potter with a passion – the only other person he’d ever met. He was captivated and couldn’t help but let it be known. By the fifth week of the course, they’d become inseparable. They found it hard to imagine how they’d ever lived life without one another.

“We’re a whole now,” she’d said at the time. “Apart, we were just two halves. Now, we’re complete.”

“Yes,” he’d agreed.

It was right.

They went for long walks. They took a holiday.

She wrote him a poem:

Evening, and the breeze comes
as solace - ruffling its skirt-edge
on the shore, stirring late birds
home.

We watch a cloud-bank catch
the sun, ease its decline, lay it
gently to rest in the sea -
one force absorbing another
across the line.

Your fingers, lacing into mine.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d found his soul mate. Two halves. A whole. Complete.

Jo finished with her nails and stretched her legs out onto the rug. Then she took a sip from her glass. Earlier, she’d made a daisy chain and looped it through her hair. He could see the tiny flowers now, poking through between the dark strands like stars. She was letting her hair grow again, as she’d had it when they’d first met. Where her hair touched them, her shoulders were as pale and waxen-looking as alabaster. He could see the beads of moisture on her glass. He could feel his eyelids beginning to get heavy. And then she looked at him – the first time since – and her lips twitched.

“Okay?” he said.

She slipped down onto her knees and came over to him across the rug. He took her hand and she sat at his feet, leaning back against the arm of the chair. She glanced up at him with a half-smile, and he could see there was something behind it – like she was trying to divine something from him. Then she turned her head again and rested it against his thigh. She looked down and picked at the threads of the rug. He put his glass down and stroked her hair.

“What are you thinking about?” she said.

He made a small sound in his throat – a vibration – and stared out into the garden again.

“Nothing, really. I was just thinking…” He stopped and took another sip of his wine. “That’s all,” he said. “Wool-gathering.”

She continued to pick at the rug. “You’re always thinking. Off in that world of yours. I sometimes wonder what’s in that world.”

She looked up at him again and he shrugged.

“Nothing much. I was just thinking how…” He hesitated, knowing what to say and wanting to say it, but finding himself searching for something else. “…how it might be nice to have someone around one night, before the summer’s over. Get some bottles of wine in. Fire up a barbie. Maybe have a little fire going out there. Quiet music. Relaxing conversation. Don’t you think that would be good?”

She moved her head slightly so that she could see into the garden. Outside, Mickey got up and stretched his legs, then began to wander langorously through the grass towards the door.

“If you like. You know more people than I do. Who were you thinking of asking?”

“Oh, I dunno… Mel and John, maybe. You’d like them. I haven’t seen them for a while now.”

Mickey skipped over the step onto the rug and immediately began rubbing his head around Jo’s knees. Then he turned on his back for her to stroke his chest.

“That might be nice. When do you want to do it?”

Hm. When? He thought about that. The truth was, he wasn’t sure where Mel and John were living now, or even if he still had their number. He’d more or less lost touch when he’d left that job. It was how these things happened: people come and go. In some ways, they now seemed like a part of his old life. Ancient history, almost. He’d never been a big one for friendships, anyway. Jo was the same. It was part of what had drawn them together in the first place. And since they’d been together, no one else had registered very much. The neighbours were older – apart from the Baldwins across the road, and they weren’t Ted’s and Jo’s types: big cars, noisy parties, fashion accessory dogs.

“I don’t know. When we get a bit straighter here. Before the end of the summer, though.” He pulled a strand of her hair up and rubbed it between his thumb and finger. It was as dark as a twist of licorice, with a faint glint of deep red where the dying sun caught it. “We’ll get this conservatory smartened up, anyway. Just a few touches to make it look better.”

~

When they’d first looked at the house, Ted had been hesitant. There was extensive work to do. The previous occupiers had been an elderly couple who’d been in the place for years. Then the woman had died suddenly and the old boy had gone into a home. There were no children. Every room needed decorating. They’d both smoked, too, and the smell still lingered in the air – even after the walls had been scrubbed and the carpets and curtains changed. The water from the wall scrubbing had been the colour of strong coffee. It was growing fainter, and they hardly noticed it when they were indoors. But if they’d been out, it was the first thing that hit them when they returned: that stale, sour mustiness. Not just the smoke, either, Ted often thought. Something else. The odour you sometimes find in the houses of very old people. Neglect, perhaps. Things left because they no longer mattered.

Then there was the modernising to do. New kitchen units. New doors. A replacement gas boiler. Some minor structural work. Much of this they’d managed to cover for themselves by a favourable negotiation on the price. And then there was the conservatory. Original from the 50s, and not used by the old couple once the rot had set in. It would probably fall down of its own accord within a few years if nothing was done. It was hard to know where to start. At first, Ted had felt overwhelmed by it all. Jo could tell he was anxious.

“We’ve got the rest of our lives,” she’d said. “It doesn’t all have to be done at once.”

“It can’t be – unless someone leaves us a fortune.”

They’d stood in the middle of the living room, looking around while the estate agent went outside to take a call on his mobile. She’d squeezed his hand – to reassure him that he wasn’t alone in this. If his hand was shaking, she didn’t seem to feel it.

“We just have to look beyond it to the potential,” she’d said. “We won’t get better for the money.”

He had to agree. It was the largest they could afford. They needed it large. They’d need that extra room. In time. For now, he could use it to write in. Try that novel again. It still sat there, on the hard drive, on Chapter Eight. As it had been since that night. Waiting.

~

Jo held her hand up and flicked her fingers, and Ted saw Mickey’s fine hairs fall from them like strands of silk. The sun was sinking fast now, and its light gave a coppery glow to Jo’s skin. She stood up all of a sudden and turned to kiss Ted on the forehead.

“Well… I’m going to leave you to your thoughts and have a bath. Then I’m for bed. Any more of that wine and I’ll fall asleep here.”

Her hand fell to his leg and she stroked the inside of his thigh. She gave him that look again, like she could see inside.

“Are we forgiven?”

He gave her a smile. “Yeah… we’re forgiven.”

She squeezed his leg. Then she stepped back over the rug to the French window – Mickey following behind with his tail up, purring.

“Don’t be too long,” she said.

When he was alone, Ted refilled his glass. Through the kitchen window, he saw the bathroom light go on and Jo’s shadow as she passed through the door and closed it. Then he heard water flowing through the pipes.

He looked around at the piles of stuff, the mould around the beams, the buckets on the floor. He tried to do what she’d said – consider the possibilities. However hard they worked, however much they saved, it would still take years. Which is what they had, after all. Years. Jo was so relaxed about it, like she could take it all in her stride. The natural progress through things… a marriage, a home, a family. He wished he could feel the same. He didn’t know how to tell her how afraid it made him.

And then there was that other part of him – a part that he hated and that he found difficult to understand, but that he couldn’t deny. The part that constantly wondered how things would have turned out if none of this had happened. If he’d stayed on the bus that night after all. If he’d gone home instead. If Jo and he had never met. The part that made him wonder if he was up to this after all. If this was what he was really meant to be doing with his life. A few times recently, of an evening, he’d driven into town to pick up some odd bits at the supermarket and had found himself going off route to pass his old flat. Someone else was in there now and he could see new curtains up at the living room window and a lamp glowing behind them – on the opposite side to the one where he’d had his own lamp. It had a strange, compelling fascination for him – imagining someone else in there, living the life he’d once had. He’d been happy there – happier than any other place he’d lived in his life. He thought of himself still back there, carrying on the life that he’d left behind. Wondering where else it might have taken him. Where he’d be today if he still had it.

A sudden breeze blew in from the garden, bringing with it a moth, which flew around the candle bowl in wide, fluttery arcs. The water stopped running and there was silence for a moment. A light flickered in the sky above the rooftops at the back, followed by the faint, distant rumble of thunder.

Ted picked up the wine bottle and stepped out onto the grass. It felt cool and slightly damp under his bare feet. It had been a scorching day, and both the breeze and the promise of a storm came as a relief. He walked up past the plum tree to the end bed, which – so the estate agent had told them – had once been a thriving vegetable plot. Now, it was a tangle of weeds and brambles. In one place, Ted could see the hollow where Mickey had taken to sleeping during the day. Beyond the bed was a low larchlap fence, which divided the garden from those of the houses in the next road. Ted could see lights on at some of the back windows, and shadowy figures moving about the rooms. Lives going on, oblivious to his presence. There was the faint sound of a TV filtering out from somewhere – some film music, rising in a dramatic crescendo, followed by a scream. Apart from that, the only other sound in the night was the distant rush of the traffic out on the A road, like the sound of the sea in a shell. Ted took a swig from the bottle, then turned back towards the conservatory just as another flash lit the sky – closer this time, with the rumble just a few seconds behind.

He stopped by the plum tree a moment and held his breath. He put his hand up and fingered one of the branches, feeling the tiny rounds of the growing fruit. It was a very productive tree, so they’d been told. Ted had wondered, idly, if he might try making some wine from the fruit – a thing he’d always fancied doing. Easy enough. A few basic ingredients. Something for the must to ferment in. And time. Not something that could be rushed. He felt the budding fruit between his fingers – the tiny balled fists of sweet unborn life. And in that small thing, he also felt the great weight of everything he’d come to know and feel during this past year. The decisions he’d made. The course he was taking.

It made him think of that last holiday he’d taken alone, two years earlier. He’d gone wild camping on Dartmoor – just himself, a tent, a rucksack and a bedroll. One night, miles from anywhere, he’d laid awake listening to the rain and the wind sweep around the hillside. He’d prayed that he’d erected the tent firmly enough, feeling sure that at any moment a stray gust would grab it and rip it away from him. But it had held. And then, in the morning, he’d crawled out to find himself adrift in a cloud – a dense mist, buffeting against the tent on all sides, so that just a few feet of grass was all that was visible. He knew the mists could lift as quickly as they came, and he knew he should have stayed put. But he wanted to beat the rain that was threatening, so he packed up the tent and – taking a rough bearing from the lie of the hill – headed back in what he was sure was the general direction of the Higher White Tor. From there, he could find his way to the road – mist or no. After an hour of scrambling, though, he knew he’d gone wrong. The wall he’d been expecting to come to hadn’t materialised. Likewise the beginning of the slope down the valley to the river. And then the rain had started – not heavy, but bad enough. Despairing, cursing himself for his stupidity, feeling more alone than he’d ever felt in his life, he’d set his stuff down on a rock and prepared to get the tent out again, wondering how long he’d have to be here – wherever he was now.

And then it happened. Suddenly, ahead of him, the mist lifted and there was the tor – half a mile distant, the stones on its summit glistening with a strange grey light. Relief washed over him like the rain. He’d been going right all the time – just following a different course. The points were fixed now. An hour to the road and he was home. He could do it with his eyes shut from here. In getting lost, he'd found his way.

The breeze came again and he felt his flesh goosepimple. Stepping back through the dark grass, towards the conservatory door, he heard the sound of the water flushing away down the side of the house. The light went on in the bedroom and Jo appeared, wrapped in her white cotton dressing gown and with her hair turbanned up in a towel. He could see the flush of her face from the heat of the water. He stopped again – just outside the range of the light – and watched as she popped her head around the French window into the conservatory. He heard his name being called. Then she peered out into the night, but he knew she couldn’t see him. She called his name once more, louder. Then she put her head in again, pulled the French window to and closed the curtain across it.

He stepped quietly into the conservatory. The candles were still alight in the bowl, and the glass cast an inky blue light around the room. As he bent to blow out the flames, he noticed the moth, still now, lying on the surface of the water. He could see the clippings of his wife’s nails in the lid of the paint tin beside it. He took another swig from the wine bottle, then placed it quietly on the table beside the candle bowl. He stood looking at the curtains – at Jo’s shadow against them as she sat at her dressing table putting on her face cream.

Another flash of lightning came – so close and brilliant that the room was suddenly lit like day. The crack of thunder was right there with it – a huge sound that made the furniture shake.

Then there was deep darkness as the power went out – so sudden that Ted felt like he’d been struck blind. He heard Jo cry out with the shock. Then she called his name again.

He groped his way towards the French window, kicking paints tins as he went. He felt for the handle.

“I’m here, love,” he called. “Don’t worry. I’m here. I’m coming.”