Solsbury Hill A Novel (24 page)

From inside the rock, she watched the weather change for hours. Inside it was warm as if a hot spring ran through the rock, so she was comfortable sitting with her legs crossed, and by the time the storm stopped, it was lucky there was a moon so she could make her way home without getting lost.

Coming from the dark of the moors, the light in the library shone like a beacon. Thinking Mead might be working late in the library, she stopped there before heading into the house. If Mead were still awake, she would be able to talk with him.

When she opened the heavy library door, Mead was asleep in one of the big chairs. Eleanor leaned down and kissed his cool forehead and as her lips touched his skin, she was grateful.

PART

THREE

M
ead had invited Eleanor to go with him to Pickering, a town on the edge of the Dalby Forest where there was an ancient church with the most well-preserved medieval wall paintings in all of Yorkshire. On the way, they were going to stop for drinks with some friends of his, so it was an official date and Eleanor was thrilled to step away from her thorny preoccupations with ghosts and truths and ancestry. She looked forward to a deeper sense of Mead, meeting friends, and feeling like a simple young woman again.

“This Dalby Forest was born in the last ice age on the shore of a great glacial lake.” Mead had been telling her all sorts of things about the countryside as they drove along. The houses in town were built of thatched roofs, old brick, and ancient Yorkshire limestone—the geological history of which
he’d explained in some detail. He’d told her about the Bronze Age, the Vikings, the Normans, all about mottes and keeps and the structure of medieval buildings.

As the car rounded a bend on a hill, about to drop into the valley beyond which lay Pickering, Eleanor crossed her arms on her chest in a mock moment of pique and interrupted him.

“Did you know that the island of Manhattan rests on a massive bed of Paleozoic garnet? It’s what gives them confidence to build those amazing skyscrapers. The earth is so solid underneath them.”

He looked at her, hazarding a smile. “You come from a fine city,” he said. “Really, you do.”

“How about I keep my eye out for roe deer and badgers?” She slid down in her seat and Mead patted her hand.

The road wound around the moors and heathland for miles more before Mead pointed toward a low fortress wall on the top of a hill in the distance.

“That’s where we’re headed.”

The long driveway was cobbled with irregular chunks of Yorkstone, and when Mead stopped the car she saw the house was one story of rambling stone and brick, with no apparent windows or doors.

“It’s unbelievable,” she said, getting out of the car.

Mead led her through a hardly visible break in the apparently impenetrable wall. Inside, there was a white rock garden with a bubbling fountain and then a pair of glass doors with detailed ironwork. Mead was almost boyish in his
excitement as they stood there. Her cheek was at the level of his shoulder and he looked grand in a jacket and loose brandy-colored corduroy pants. He seemed flustered, and she had to remind him to ring the bell.

A friendly-faced young woman answered. She was big with a baby belly, her face was long and lean, and her eyes were limpid with generosity.

“Darling man.” Mead had flowers with him and a bottle of champagne. “Eleanor,” she said and embraced her warmly.

“More gorgeous than ever,” Mead said. “Eleanor, this is my great friend Lucy, and this her hardheaded bloke, Jim.” A redheaded man wrapped his arms around Lucy’s fine belly and with his chin resting there on his wife’s shoulder, reached around to shake Eleanor’s hand.

“Come in, come in. Thanks, mate,” he said, taking the champagne and flowers. A bouncy short-haired blonde in miniskirt and bare legs came around a corner and took them from Jim, introduced herself to Eleanor. “Kendra,” she said, “and my boyfriend, Harry.” Coming in from the garden, Harry carried a ladder he set down so he could make it across the room to greet Eleanor properly.

“We’re making a baby’s room,” Lucy said. “Problem is we don’t know the color, so we’ve been mixing paints to find one that pleases, won’t offend, whichever she is.”

“Whichever
he
is, she means,” Jim added.

“We’ve settled on a slightly grayed green. It looks better than it sounds. Come have a look, won’t you?”

Lucy led them in. The back of the house was a wall of windows, from one end to the other, which opened on to a backyard that was flat with a low wall around it and beyond that was the thick of a forest.

“They call the house the Bailey,” Mead said. “That out there is like a kind of bailey.” He stopped himself. “Do you like it?”

It was sparsely furnished with pieces of this and that, nothing that formed a whole or matched. “It’s fantastic. I’m stunned. Can we stay?” Eleanor whispered as they walked a few feet behind the others.

“If we did, we’d have to help clean up. We won’t be long. Just wanted you to see . . .”

“He designed this place,” Jim said.

Eleanor looked up at Mead’s strong, handsome face. He was shaking his head. “Drew some drawings, is all I did.” He was genuinely humble.

“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Lucy said.

“It really is,” Eleanor said.

The baby’s room had a wall of curtains over the wall of windows, but Lucy pulled the drapes open. “In the spring there’s a baby field of poppies right there,” she said. “It will look nice with the green, I think, don’t you?”

“I do.” One wall was painted and a crib was half put together. “How long before the baby’s due?”

“Any day, we think.”

There were too many people in the small child’s room, so
they moved into the living room, a pleasant jumble of colorful mismatched furniture that clashed, in the best way, with the perfection of the house itself.

Mead was, as always, relaxed in his skin, but in the company of his good friends she could see more parts of him: how he was a mix of commanding and charming, self-effacing and deeply kind. They’d been at school and then at university together. They were educated and spoke familiarly about an array of things, finishing off the California chardonnay and then opening the champagne. Kendra’d made fudge and some butter cookies, so they feasted on sweets and guessed about names for the baby.

“Did you really design this?” Eleanor asked.

Mead was utterly at home with his long legs stretched out from the chair. He’d finished putting the crib together, had gone into the cupboards for glasses and popped the cork on the champagne bottle, served everyone a glass.

It was different to see him loved by other people. Really loved—one could feel it and it cast a kind of light on his face: like the difference between a postcard and a real place.

“He certainly did.” A barrister in London, Harry spoke with a slight stutter.

Mead was across the coffee table from her. “It really was just a drawing,” he said.

Jim cuffed him on the shoulder as he walked behind him and Mead dropped his head back. Grabbed hold of Jim and they played at roughhousing.

“He told me he built castles and dreams,” Eleanor said, “and I thought he was kidding.”

The whole room sparkled with delight at this.

The ancient church in the town of Pickering was modest inside. She and Mead were alone except for a man climbing down a ladder, who invited Eleanor to come have a close look at the medieval paintings. The figures were drawn in thick black lines. She didn’t know much about art but she knew enough to be startled. How modern they seemed: beyond a perfect rendering, they were almost cartoons of expression and feeling. Edmund, in the depiction of his martyrdom, was tied to a stake. His feet were turned out and he stood on a small field of cheerful, childlike red flowers. With arrows piercing him, his face looked perplexed, almost ironic, and Eleanor felt him looking straight at her and asking what the heck she thought was going on here. She climbed down the ladder and thanked the old man for letting her up.

They strolled along and looked at the panels. In a low whisper, Mead read to her about how the church had plastered over them long ago and happily this had protected them, once they were restored.

Each picture had a sense of the inevitable in it. Whether Salome danced or St. George pranced on the red belly of a dragon or Jesus tolerated the Passion, they were Bible dramas
mitigated by thick, simple black lines, pure colors, and candor.

Outside the church, Eleanor and Mead walked awhile. The fresh air relieved Eleanor and she linked her arm through Mead’s. At the top of the hill, so steep you felt you might slide right down and off the edge of it, there was a view of the wildly vast countryside.

“I used to feel in the middle of nowhere, here, but I don’t anymore,” she said.

He stepped in front of her.

“And you, with those green eyes.”

He pulled her toward him. The top of her head was at his chin and he pulled her so close she had to lift her face to see him. “Fact is,” he said, “you’re only ever exactly where you are.”

“And happily so.”

“You know the inn’s only got the one room,” he whispered.

She blessed him with her pure smile. “I am fully capable of behaving myself in bed.”

“Well, I like the sound of that,” he said.

The room was dressed up in pink and cream paisley bedspread and curtains. Eleanor opened the window to let in some fresh air. She sat on his lap. She turned around and unlaced her shoes, then kicked them off. She took off her
sweater and wriggled out of her jeans. This left her in a T-shirt and the pale blue frilly knickers she’d bought in Haworth. They were lacy frills from top to bottom, particularly across the bottom.

“Your friends are great, that room she’s making . . .”

“You’re going to talk whilst sitting on my lap in those lovely knickers?” he said.

“It can’t be called behaving if there’s nothing at stake, can it?”

His warm hands held her legs. The tips of his fingers moved slightly inside her thighs. Mead took off his shirt and Eleanor shivered with simple pleasure at the sight of him. He gathered her in and they climbed under the comforter. The length of her body was against him.