smashed into fragments. Neither of them could have said for certain whether he had thrown it or accidentally let it fall.
‘I don’t want to get old.’
There was so much vehemence and bitterness in his voice that it frightened her. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about death. Jake’s dead, Stephen’s dead. There are skeletons at the bottom of the fucking garden. What happened to the fairies, then? I want to live now, Mirry. I want you.’
‘I know,’ she whispered again.
If Polly hadn’t come in at that moment, she would have gone to him.
‘That was Omie,’ Polly said. She flipped her phone shut.
‘Was it?’ Selwyn sounded dazed.
‘I just said it was. There’s broken glass all over the floor.’
He sighed. ‘I dropped my drink.’
‘Probably just as well.’ Polly had already gone for the dustpan. He took it from her and roughly swept up the broken pieces. Miranda stood up, very stiffly, as if all her joints hurt.
‘It’s been an interesting day, hasn’t it? I’m going to bed. Sleep well, you two,’ she said.
Polly and Selwyn lay on their bed under the tarpaulin. Water dripped steadily above their heads and ran off into an enamel bowl. The various drips into various receptacles around the room sounded like an elaborate piano exercise.
‘Are you ready?’ Selwyn asked.
‘Yes.’
He leaned up on one elbow, his shadow looming grotesquely on the opposite wall. He fiddled for a moment with the knob and then turned out the gas lamp. The mantle glowed red for two seconds and then they were in darkness.
‘Were you and Miranda arguing?’ Polly asked.
‘No.’
She waited, but he didn’t add anything.
She was intensely conscious of her heavy thigh and the six inches that separated their two bodies. If Selwyn and Miranda hadn’t been arguing there was something else going on, and that possibility worried her much more than routine squabbling. History meant that there was always a buried connection between the two of them, but Polly was beginning to realize that she had underestimated the pull of it. Living here as closely as they did, seeing each other constantly, was disinterring the ancient foundations.
The dripping seemed to grow louder, as if the drops were hitting her skull.
‘I’m concerned about Omie,’ she said at length, casting her fears in a less threatening mould.
Selwyn gave an impatient twitch. ‘That’s nothing very new. What is it this time?’
‘She’s angry with us. We’ve sold their home, moved up here. She says it’s as if we’ve abandoned them.’
There were five drips, then six. Three of them came very close together, almost as one.
‘Poll, our children are all adults. We’ve brought them to this point, healthy and educated and relatively normal. Or you have, mostly, I’m not claiming any particular glory for it. But we’ve got to let them live their own lives, now, and in the future. You can’t be their guardian and safety net for ever. Even you can’t do that.’
‘I could. Isn’t that what parents are meant to do?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Omie says she thinks there’s something up with Ben. Alph does, as well.’
Despite her anxiety, Polly felt drowsiness beginning to smother her. She was always tired, these days. She knew that her voice had taken on a meandering quality.
As if from a long way off she heard Selwyn say, in an impatient mutter, ‘If there’s something up with Ben, as Omie says, then we’ll hear about it.’
‘Yes,’ Polly finally agreed. She turned on to her side, away from him.
Selwyn lay on his back, unmoving.
Gardening makes me think of Jake.
He’s here in all the stones and shadows of Mead – or rather his absence is, because rational recall often fails me and I look up expecting to see him, only to experience all over again a miniaturized spasm of shock and loss – but it is the garden that contains the most vivid memories.
The first time he brought me here, when we were newly in love and I could still hardly believe that there were no obstacles to our being together for ever, we sat against the wall of the house, over there on the wrought-iron bench where my discarded jacket and gardening apron now lie. It was the end of May, and the bricks were warm with the day’s sunshine. There were sprays of thick cream roses arching off the walls, and wood pigeons noisy in the trees.
‘Could you live here?’ Jake asked me.
It was like being asked if I thought I could endure Paradise.
‘You’re an urban woman,’ he said, when I asked why he doubted it. ‘You might get bored here with me. You might feel isolated from London, from acting and all the people you know and the life you’re used to.’
I told him that I loved him, and the only life I wanted was with him, and that was the truth.
I was turning forty and Jake was already sixty. I had had a modest success as a stage actress, but I knew that I was never going to be as good as a dozen of my contemporaries. Hollywood casting directors were never going to come calling. I had had numerous boyfriends and lovers after my first and only fiancé, Selwyn, but this sense of rightness with a man, of there being nothing to qualify or redeem in our relationship, was absolutely new to me.
Jake had been briefly married in his thirties but there had been no children, and his wife seemed to have made little impression on the house or indeed on him. After that, I assumed, there would have been girlfriends; after all I had met Jake at that most unpromising of romantic opportunities for a single woman, a dinner party given by a couple I had met on holiday. He had singled me out, and the next evening we went out to dinner on our own. It was hardly likely that I was the first to receive this sort of attention from him, but I believed him when he promised me that I would be the last.
Although he didn’t bring me here immediately I learned very quickly, just from the way he talked about it, that Jake was inseparable from Mead. And as soon as he did invite me and I began to know the place, I understood why.
He was offering me himself, and he didn’t do it lightly.
We sat on the wrought-iron bench and listened to the birds. The sun slowly sank, the bricks glowed as if they radiated their own light, and Jake turned to me.
‘Could you be a country wife, do you think?’
Yes,
